On the earthen bank on the far side of the stream there appeared, while she gazed, a brilliant figure.  It came soundlessly on bare feet from a hidden garden; a tall, unveiled girl, dressed in draperies of vivid magenta, who carried in her exquisitely-shaped brown hands a number of handkerchiefs—­scarlet, orange, yellow green and flesh colour.  She did not glance into the auberge garden, but caught up her draperies into a bunch with one hand, exposing her slim legs far above the knees, waded into the stream, and bending, dipped the handkerchiefs in the water.

The current took them.  They streamed out on the muddy surface of the stream, and tugged as if, suddenly endowed with life, they were striving to escape from the hand that held them.

The girl’s face was beautiful, with small regular features and lustrous, tender eyes.  Her figure, not yet fully developed, was perfect in shape, and seemed to thrill softly with the spirit of youth.  Her tint of bronze suggested statuary, and every fresh pose into which she fell, while the water eddied about her, strengthened the suggestion.  With the golden sunlight streaming upon her, the brown banks, the brown waters, the brown walls throwing up the crude magenta of her bunched-up draperies, the vivid colours of the handkerchiefs that floated from her hand, with the feathery palms beside her, the cloudless blue sky above her, she looked so strangely African and so completely lovely that Domini watched her with an almost breathless attention.

She withdrew the handkerchiefs from the stream, waded out, and spread them one by one upon the low earth wall to dry, letting her draperies fall.  When she had finished disposing them she turned round, and, no longer preoccupied with her task, looked under her level brows into the garden opposite and saw Domini and her companion.  She did not start, but stood quite still for a moment, then slipped away in the direction whence she had come.  Only the brilliant patches of colour on the wall remained to hint that she had been there and would come again.  Domini sighed.

“What a lovely creature!” she said, more to herself than to Androvsky.

He did not speak, and his silence made her consciously demand his acquiescence in her admiration.

“Did you ever see anything more beautiful and more characteristic of Africa?” she asked.

“Madame,” he said in a slow, stern voice, “I did not look at her.”

Domini felt piqued.

“Why not?” she retorted.

Androvsky’s face was cloudy and almost cruel.

“These native women do not interest me,” he said.  “I see nothing attractive in them.”

Domini knew that he was telling her a lie.  Had she not seen him watching the dancing girls in Tahar’s cafe?  Anger rose in her.  She said to herself then that it was anger at man’s hypocrisy.  Afterwards she knew that it was anger at Androvsky’s telling a lie to her.