“It’s night.”

“I’m not afraid.”

“I’ll go with you, Madame.”

He said it again harshly and kept his eyes on her, frowning.

“And if I refuse?” she said, wondering whether she was going to refuse or not.

“I’ll follow you, Madame.”

She knew by the look on his face that he, too, was thinking of what had happened in the afternoon.  Why should she wish to deprive him of the reparation he was anxious to make—­obviously anxious in an almost piteously determined way?  It was poor pride in her, a mean little feeling.

“Come with me,” she said.

They went on together.

The Arabs, stirred up by the fracas in Tahar’s cafe, were seething with excitement, and several of them, gathered together in a little crowd, were quarrelling and shouting at the end of the street near the statue of the Cardinal.  Domini’s escort saw them and hesitated.

“I think, Madame, it would be better to take a side street,” he said.

“Very well.  Let us go to the left here.  It is bound to bring us to the hotel as it runs parallel to the house of the sand diviner.”

He started.

“The sand-diviner?” he said in his low, strong voice.

“Yes.”

She walked on into a tiny alley.  He followed her.

“You haven’t seen the thin man with the bag of sand?”

“No, Madame.”

“He reads your past in sand from the desert and tells what your future will be.”

The man made no reply.

“Will you pay him a visit?” Domini asked curiously.

“No, Madame.  I do not care for such things.”

Suddenly she stood still.

“Oh, look!” she said.  “How strange!  And there are others all down the street.”

In the tiny alley the balconies of the houses nearly met.  No figures leaned on their railings.  No chattering voices broke the furtive silence that prevailed in this quarter of Beni-Mora.  The moonlight was fainter here, obscured by the close-set buildings, and at the moment there was not an Arab in sight.  The sense of loneliness and peace was profound, and as the rare windows of the houses, minute and protected by heavy gratings, were dark, it had seemed to Domini at first as if all the inhabitants were in bed and asleep.  But, in passing on, she had seen a faint and blanched illumination; then another; the vague vision of an aperture; a seated figure making a darkness against whiteness; a second aperture and seated figure.  She stopped and stood still.  The man stood still beside her.