As soon as the sun began to decline towards the west she put on her hat, thrust the card Count Anteoni had given her into her glove and set out towards the big hotel alone.  She met Hadj as she walked down the arcade.  He wished to accompany her, and was evidently filled with treacherous ideas of supplanting his friend Batouch, but she gave him a franc and sent him away.  The franc soothed him slightly, yet she could see that his childish vanity was injured.  There was a malicious gleam in his long, narrow eyes as he looked after her.  Yet there was genuine admiration too.  The Arab bows down instinctively before any dominating spirit, and such a spirit in a foreign woman flashes in his eyes like a bright flame.  Physical strength, too, appeals to him with peculiar force.  Hadj tossed his head upwards, tucked in his chin, and muttered some words in his brown throat as he noted the elastic grace with which the rejecting foreign woman moved till she was out of his sight.  And she never looked back at him.  That was a keen arrow in her quiver.  He fell into a deep reverie under the arcade and his face became suddenly like the face of a sphinx.

Meanwhile Domini had forgotten him.  She had turned to the left down a small street in which some Indians and superior Arabs had bazaars.  One of the latter came out from the shadow of his hanging rugs and embroideries as she passed, and, addressing her in a strange mixture of incorrect French and English, begged her to come in and examine his wares.

She shook her head, but could not help looking at him with interest.

He was the thinnest man she had ever seen, and moved and stood almost as if he were boneless.  The line of his delicate and yet arbitrary features was fierce.  His face was pitted with small-pox and marked by an old wound, evidently made by a knife, which stretched from his left cheek to his forehead, ending just over the left eyebrow.  The expression of his eyes was almost disgustingly intelligent.  While they were fixed upon her Domini felt as if her body were a glass box in which all her thoughts, feelings, and desires were ranged for his inspection.  In his demeanour there was much that pleaded, but also something that commanded.  His fingers were unnaturally long and held a small bag, and he planted himself right before her in the road.

“Madame, come in, venez avec moi.  Venez—­venez!  I have much—­I will show—­j’ai des choses extraordinaires!  Tenez!  Look!”

He untied the mouth of the bag.  Domini looked into it, expecting to see something precious—­jewels perhaps.  She saw only a quantity of sand, laughed, and moved to go on.  She thought the Arab was an impudent fellow trying to make fun of her.

“No, no, Madame!  Do not laugh!  Ce sable est du desert.  Il y a des histoires la-dedans.  Il y a l’histoire de Madame.  Come bazaar!  I will read for Madame—­what will be—­what will become—­I will read—­I will tell.  Tenez!” He stared down into the bag and his face became suddenly stern and fixed.  “Deja je vois des choses dans la vie de Madame.  Ah!  Mon Dieu!  Ah!  Mon Dieu!”