They traversed its dusty alleys slowly.  On the side where the low brown dwellings threw shadows some of the inhabitants were dreaming or chattering, wrapped in garments of gaudy cotton.  Little girls in the fiercest orange colour, with tattooed foreheads and leathern amulets, darted to and fro, chasing each other and shrieking with laughter.  Naked babies, whose shaven heads made a warm resting-place for flies, stared at Domini with a lustrous vacancy of expression.  At the corners of the alleys unveiled women squatted, grinding corn in primitive hand-mills, or winding wool on wooden sticks.  Their heads were covered with plaits of imitation hair made of wool, in which barbaric silver ornaments were fastened, and their black necks and arms jingled with chains and bangles set with squares of red coral and large dull blue and green stones.  Some of them called boldly to Batouch, and he answered them with careless impudence.  The palm-wood door of one of the houses stood wide open, and Domini looked in.  She saw a dark space with floor and walls of earth, a ceiling of palm and brushwood, a low divan of earth without mat or covering of any kind.

“They have no furniture?” she asked Batouch.

“No.  What do they want with it?  They live out here in the sun and go in to sleep.”

Life simplified to this extent made her smile.  Yet she looked at the squatting figures in the gaudy cotton rags with a stirring of envy.  The memory of her long and complicated London years, filled with a multitude of so-called pleasures which had never stifled the dull pain set up in her heart by the rude shock of her mother’s sin and its result, made this naked, sunny, barbarous existence seem desirable.  She stood for a moment to watch two women sorting grain for cous-cous.  Their guttural laughter, their noisy talk, the quick and energetic movements of their busy black hands, reminded her of children’s gaiety.  And Nature rose before her in the sunshine, confronting artifice and the heavy languors of modern life in cities.  How had she been able to endure the yoke so long?

“Will Madame take me to London with her when she returns?” said Batouch, slyly.

“I am not going back to London for a very long time,” she replied with energy.

“You will stay here many weeks?”

“Months, perhaps.  And perhaps I shall travel on into the desert.  Yes, I must do that.”

“If we followed the white road into the desert, and went on and on for many days, we should come at last to Tombouctou,” said Batouch.  “But very likely we should be killed by the Touaregs.  They are fierce and they hate strangers.”

“Would you be afraid to go?” Domini asked him, curiously.

“Why afraid?”

“Of being killed?”

He looked calmly surprised.  “Why should I be afraid to die?  All must pass through that door.  It does not matter whether it is to-day or to-morrow.”

“You have no fear of death, then?”