“Master!” they said.

They were pushing him forward by the elbows, Mohammed and Houseen.  He opened his eyes.  The crowd swam before him through the yellow glow.  Something had made an odd breach in his soul, and through the breach came memories.

Memories!  There at his left was the smoky shelf of blind Moulay’s cafe—­black-faced, white-eyed old Moulay.  Moulay was dead now many years, but the men still sat in the same attitudes, holding the same cups, smoking the same chibouk with the same gulping of bubbles as in the happy days.  And there between the cafe and the souk gate was the same whitewashed niche where three lads used to sit with their feet tucked under their little kashabias, their chechias awry on their shaven polls, and their lips pursed to spit after the leather legs of the infidel conquerors passing by.  The Roumi, the French blasphemers, the defilers of the mosque!  Spit on the dogs!  Spit!

Behind his reverie the drums boomed, the voices chanted.  The lament of drums and voices beat at the back of his brain—­while he remembered the three lads sitting in the niche, waiting from one white day to another for the coming of Moulay Saa, the Messiah; watching for the Holy War to begin.

“And I shall ride in the front rank of the horsemen, please God!”

“And I, I shall ride at Moulay Saa’s right hand, please God, and I shall cut the necks of Roumi with my sword, like barley straw!”

Habib advanced in the spotlight of the candles.  Under the burnoose his face, half shadowed, looked green and white, as if he were sick to his death.  Or, perhaps, as if he were being born again.

The minutes passed, and they were hours.  The music went on, interminable.

“Boom-boom-boom-boom ——­” But now Habib himself was the instrument, and now the old song of his race played its will on him.

Pinkness began to creep over the green-white cheeks.  The cadence of the chanting had changed.  It grew ardent, melting, voluptuous.

_...  And conquests I have made among the fair ones, perfume inundated, Beauties ravishing; that sway in an air of musk and saffron, Bearing still on their white necks the traces of kisses...._

It hung under the pepper trees, drunk with the beauty of flesh, fainting with passion.  Above the trees mute lightning played in the cloud.  Habib ben Habib was born again.  Again, after exile, he came back into the heritage.  He saw the heaven of the men of his race.  He saw Paradise in a walking dream.  He saw women forever young and forever lovely in a land of streams, women forever changing, forever virgin, forever new; strangers intimate and tender.  The angels of a creed of love—­or of lust!

“Lust is the thing you find where you don’t find trust.”