space, and disappeared into a cranny.  Pigeons circled above the home activities, delicate lovers of the air, wandered among the palm tops, returned and fearlessly alighted on the brown earth parapets, strutting hither and thither and making their perpetual, characteristic motion of the head, half nod, half genuflection.  Veiled girls promenaded to take the evening cool, folding their arms beneath their flowing draperies, and chattering to one another in voices that Domini could not hear.  More close at hand certain roofs in the dancers’ street revealed luxurious sofas on which painted houris were lolling in sinuous attitudes, or were posed with a stiffness of idols, little tables set with coffee cups, others round which were gathered Zouaves intent on card games, but ever ready to pause for a caress or for some jesting absurdity with the women who squatted beside them.  Some men, dressed like girls, went to and fro, serving the dancers with sweetmeats and with cigarettes, their beards flowing down with a grotesque effect over their dresses of embroidered muslin, their hairy arms emerging from hanging sleeves of silk.  A negro boy sat holding a tomtom between his bare knees and beating it with supple hands, and a Jewess performed the stomach dance, waving two handkerchiefs stained red and purple, and singing in a loud and barbarous contralto voice which Domini could hear but very faintly.  The card-players stopped their game and watched her, and Domini watched too.  For the first time, and from this immense height, she saw this universal dance of the east; the doll-like figure, fantastically dwarfed, waving its tiny hands, wriggling its minute body, turning about like a little top, strutting and bending, while the soldiers—­small almost from here as toys taken out of a box—­assumed attitudes of deep attention as they leaned upon the card-table, stretching out their legs enveloped in balloon-like trousers.

Domini thought of the recruits, now, no doubt, undergoing elsewhere their initiation.  For a moment she seemed to see their coarse peasant faces rigid with surprise, their hanging jaws, their childish, and yet sensual, round eyes.  Notre Dame de la Garde must seem very far away from them now.

With that thought she looked quickly away from the Jewess and the soldiers.  She felt a sudden need of something more nearly in relation with her inner self.  She was almost angry as she realised how deep had been her momentary interest in a scene suggestive of a license which was surely unattractive to her.  Yet was it unattractive?  She scarcely knew.  But she knew that it had kindled in her a sudden and very strong curiosity, even a vague, momentary desire that she had been born in some tent of the Ouled Nails—­no, that was impossible.  She had not felt such a desire even for an instant.  She looked towards the thickets of the palms, towards the mountains full of changing, exquisite colours, towards the desert.  And at once the dream began to return, and she felt as if hands slipped under her heart and uplifted it.