ak at midday, could ever
penetrate this tunnel-street.

So they went on from one alley into another, as if lost in a catacomb,
or the troubling mazes of a nightmare. Always the walls were blank, save
for a deep-set, nail-studded door, or a small window like a square dark
hole. Yet in reality, Nevill Caird was not lost. He knew his way very
well in the Kasbah, which he never tired of exploring, though he had
spent eight winters in Algiers. By and by he guided his friend into a
street not so narrow as the others they had climbed, though it was
rather like the bed of a mountain torrent, underfoot. Because the moon
could pour down a silver flood it was not dark, but the lamps were so
dull that the moonlight seemed to put them out.

Here the beating was as loud as a frightened heart. The walls resounded
with it, and sent out an echo. More than one nailed door stood open,
revealing a long straight passage, with painted walls faintly lighted
from above, and a curtain like a shadow, hiding the end. In these
passages hung the smoky perfume of incense; and from over tile-topped
walls came the fragrance of roses and lemon blossoms, half choked with
the melancholy scent of things old, musty and decayed. Beautiful
pillars, brought perhaps from ruined Carthage, were set deeply in the
whitewashed walls, looking sad and lumpy now that centuries of
chalk-coats had thickened their graceful contours. But to compensate for
loss of shape, they were dazzling white, marvellous as columns of carved
pearl in the moonlight, they and their surrounding walls seeming to send
out an eerie, bleached light of their own which struck at the eye. The
uneven path ran floods of moonlight; and from tiny windows in the
leaning snow-palaces--windows like little golden frames--looked out the
faces of women, as if painted on backgrounds of dull yellow,
emerald-green, or rose-coloured light.

They were unveiled women, jewelled like idols, white and pink as
wax-dolls, their brows drawn in black lines with herkous, their eyes
glittering between bluish lines of kohl, their lips poppy-red with the
tint of mesouak, their heads bound in sequined nets of silvered gauze,
and crowned with tiaras of gold coins. The windows were so small that
the women were hidden below their shoulders, but their huge
hoop-earrings flashed, and their many necklaces sent out sparks as they
nodded, smiling, at the passers; and one who seemed young and beautiful
as a wicked fairy, against