e
evening light. The roughness of the old, old bricks, made of baked sand,
gave an effect of many little cells; so that the honeycomb effect was
intensified; and the sand which flowed in small rippling waves round the
city, and through streets narrow and broad, was of the same honey-yellow
as the houses, except that it glittered with gypsum under the kindling
stars. Among the bubbly domes, and low square towers, vague in the
dimming light, bunches of palms in hidden gardens nodded over crumbling
walls, like dark plumes on the crowns of the dancing-women.

In the market-place was the little hotel, newly built; the only French
thing in Oued Tolga, except the military barracks, the Bureau Arabe, and
a gurgling artesian well which a French officer had lately completed.
But before Stephen could reach the market-place and the hotel, he had to
pass through the quarter of the dancing-girls.

It was a narrow street, which had low houses on either side, with a
balcony for every mean window. Dark women leaned their elbows on the
palm-wood railings, and looked down, smoking cigarettes, and calling
across to each other. Other girls sat in lighted doorways below, each
with a candle guttering on a steep step of her bare staircase; and in
the street walked silent men with black or brown faces, whose white
burnouses flowed round their tall figures like blowing clouds. Among
them were a few soldiers, whose uniforms glowed red in the twilight,
like the cigarette ends pulsing between the painted lips of the Ouled
Nails. All that quarter reeked with the sweet, wicked smell of the East;
and in the Moorish cafe at the far end, the dancing-music had begun to
throb and whine, mingling cries of love and death, with the passion of
both. But there was no dancing yet, for the audience was not large
enough. The brilliant spiders crouched in their webs, awaiting more
flies; for caravans were coming in across that desert sea which poured
its yellow billows into the narrow street; and in the market-place,
camel-drivers only just arrived were cooking their suppers. They would
all come a little later into this quarter to drink many cups of coffee,
and to spend their money on the dancers.

As Stephen went by on horseback, the girls on the balconies and in the
doorways looked at him steadily without smiling, but their eyes sparkled
under their golden crowns, or scarlet headkerchiefs and glittering
veils. Behind him and his guide, followed a procession of