ning for the sound of carriage wheels.

"Descend, lady. I will follow with thy baggage," said Hsina.

The girl obeyed, but she was suddenly conscious of a qualm as she had to
turn from the blue twilight, to pass behind that half-open door into
darkness, and the mystery of unknown things.

Before she had time to put her foot to the ground the door was thrown
wide open, and two stout Negroes dressed exactly alike in flowing white
burnouses stepped out of the house to stand on either side the carriage
door. Raising their arms as high as their heads they made two white
walls of their long cloaks between which Victoria could pass, as if
enclosed in a narrow aisle. Hsina came close upon her heels; and as they
reached the threshold of the house the white-robed black servants
dropped their arms, followed the two women, and shut the nailed door.
Then, despite the dimness of the place, they bowed their heads turning
aside as if humbly to make it evident that their unworthy eyes did not
venture to rest upon the veiled form of their mistress's guest. As for
Hsina, she, too, was veiled, though her age and ugliness would have
permitted her face to be revealed without offence to Mussulman ideas of
propriety. It was mere vanity on her part to preserve the mystery as
dear to the heart of the Moslem woman as to the jealous prejudice of the
man.

A faint glittering of the walls told Victoria that the corridor she had
entered was lined with tiles; and she could dimly see seats let in like
low shelves along its length, on either side. It was but a short
passage, with a turn into a second still shorter. At the end of this
hung a dark curtain, which Hsina lifted for Victoria to pass on, round
another turn into a wider hall, lit by an Arab lamp with glass panes
framed in delicately carved copper. The chain which suspended it from
cedar beams swayed slightly, causing the light to move from colour to
colour of the old tiles, and to strike out gleams from the marble floor
and ivory-like pillars set into the walls. The end of this corridor also
was masked by a curtain of wool, dyed and woven by the hands of nomad
tribes, tent-dwellers in the desert; and when Hsina had lifted it,
Victoria saw a small square court with a fountain in the centre.

It was not on a grand scale, like those in the palace owned by Nevill
Caird; but the fountain was graceful and charming, ornamented with the
carved, bursting pomegranates beloved by the Moors of Granada,