“Allah-Akbar!  Allah-Akbar!” It was the murmur of the desert and the murmur of the sun.  It was the whisper of the mirage, and of the airs that stole among the palm leaves.  It was the perpetual heart-beat of this world that was engulfing her, taking her to its warm and glowing bosom with soft and tyrannical intention.

“Allah!  Allah!  Allah!” Surely God must be very near, bending to such an everlasting cry.  Never before, not even when the bell sounded and the Host was raised, had Domini felt the nearness of God to His world, the absolute certainty of a Creator listening to His creatures, watching them, wanting them, meaning them some day to be one with Him, as she felt it now while she threaded the dingy alleys towards these countless men who prayed.

Androvsky was walking slowly as if in pain.

“Your shoulder isn’t hurting you?” she whispered.

This long sound of prayer moved her to the soul, made her feel very full of compassion for everybody and everything, and as if prayer were a cord binding the world together.  He shook his head silently.  She looked at him, and felt that he was moved also, but whether as she was she could not tell.  His face was like that of a man stricken with awe.  Mustapha turned round to them.  The everlasting murmur was now so near that it seemed to be within them, as if they, too, prayed at the tomb of Zerzour.

“Follow me into the court, Madame,” Mustapha said, “and remain at the door while I fetch the slippers.”

They turned a corner, and came to an open space before an archway, which led into the first of the courts surrounding the mosque.  Under the archway Arabs were sitting silently, as if immersed in profound reveries.  They did not move, but stared upon the strangers, and Domini fancied that there was enmity in their eyes.  Beyond them, upon an uneven pavement surrounded with lofty walls, more Arabs were gathered, kneeling, bowing their heads to the ground, and muttering ceaseless words in deep, almost growling, voices.  Their fingers slipped over the beads of the chaplets they wore round their necks, and Domini thought of her rosary.  Some prayed alone, removed in shady corners, with faces turned to the wall.  Others were gathered into knots.  But each one pursued his own devotions, immersed in a strange, interior solitude to which surely penetrated an unseen ray of sacred light.  There were young boys praying, and old, wrinkled men, eagles of the desert, with fierce eyes that did not soften as they cried the greatness of Allah, the greatness of his Prophet, but gleamed as if their belief were a thing of flame and bronze.  The boys sometimes glanced at each other while they prayed, and after each glance they swayed with greater violence, and bowed down with more passionate abasement.  The vision of prayer had stirred them to a young longing for excess.  The spirit of emulation flickered through them and turned their worship into war.