“I am waiting to show the village to Madame,” said Batouch, coming out softly into the road, while Hadj remained under the trees, exposing his teeth in a sarcastic grin, which plainly enough conveyed to Domini his pity for her sad mistake in not engaging him as her attendant.

Domini nodded, went back into her room and put on a shady hat.  Suzanne handed her a large parasol lined with green, and she descended the stairs rather slowly.  She was not sure whether she wanted a companion in her first walk about Beni-Mora.  There would be more savour of freedom in solitude.  Yet she had hardly the heart to dismiss Batouch, with all his dignity and determination.  She resolved to take him for a little while and then to get rid of him on some pretext.  Perhaps she would make some purchases in the bazaars and send him to the hotel with them.

“Madame has slept well?” asked the poet as she emerged into the sun.

“Pretty well,” she answered, nodding again to Hadj, whose grin became more mischievous, and opening her parasol.  “Where are we going?”

“Wherever Madame wishes.  There is the market, the negro village, the mosque, the casino, the statue of the Cardinal, the bazaars, the garden of the Count Ferdinand Anteoni.”

“A garden,” said Domini.  “Is it a beautiful one?”

Batouch was about to burst into a lyric ecstasy, but he checked himself and said: 

“Madame shall see for herself and tell me afterwards if in all Europe there is one such garden.”

“Oh, the English gardens are wonderful,” she said, smiling at his patriotic conceit.

“No doubt.  Madame shall tell me, Madame shall tell me,” he repeated with imperturbable confidence.

“But first I wish to go for a moment into the church,” she said.  “Wait for me here, Batouch.”

She crossed the road, passed the modest, one-storied house of the priest, and came to the church, which looked out on to the quiet gardens.  Before going up the steps and in at the door she paused for a moment.  There was something touching to her, as a Catholic, in this symbol of her faith set thus far out in the midst of Islamism.  The cross was surely rather lonely, here, raised above the white-robed men to whom it meant nothing.  She was conscious that since she had come to this land of another creed, and of another creed held with fanaticism, her sentiment for her own religion, which in England for many years had been but lukewarm, had suddenly gained in strength.  She had an odd, almost manly, sensation that it was her duty in Africa to stand up for her faith, not blatantly in words to impress others, but perseveringly in heart to satisfy herself.  Sometimes she felt very protective.  She felt protective today as she looked at this humble building, which she likened to one of the poor saints of the Thebaid, who dwelt afar in desert places, and whose devotions were broken by the night-cries of jackals and by the roar of ravenous beasts.  With this feeling strong upon her she pushed open the door and went in.