The Jewess still danced upon the roof to the watching Zouaves, but now there was something mystic in her tiny movements which no longer roused in Domini any furtive desire not really inherent in her nature.  There was something beautiful in everything seen from this altitude in this wondrous evening light.

Presently, without turning to her companion, she said: 

“Could anything look ugly in Beni-Mora from here at this hour, do you think?”

Again there was the silence that seemed characteristic of this man before he spoke, as if speech were very difficult to him.

“I believe not, Madame.”

“Even that woman down there on that roof looks graceful—­the one dancing for those soldiers.”

He did not answer.  She glanced at him and pointed.

“Down there, do you see?”

She noticed that he did not follow her hand and that his face became stern.  He kept his eyes fixed on the trees of the garden of the Gazelles near Cardinal Lavigerie’s statue and replied: 

“Yes, Madame.”

His manner made her think that perhaps he had seen the dance at close quarters and that it was outrageous.  For a moment she felt slightly uncomfortable, but determined not to let him remain under a false impression, she added carelessly: 

“I have never seen the dances of Africa.  I daresay I should think them ugly enough if I were near, but from this height everything is transformed.”

“That is true, Madame.”

There was an odd, muttering sound in his voice, which was deep, and probably strong, but which he kept low.  Domini thought it was the most male voice she had ever heard.  It seemed to be full of sex, like his hands.  Yet there was nothing coarse in either the one or the other.  Everything about him was vital to a point that was so remarkable as to be not actually unnatural but very near the unnatural.

She glanced at him again.  He was a big man, but very thin.  Her experienced eyes of an athletic woman told her that he was capable of great and prolonged muscular exertion.  He was big-boned and deep-chested, and had nervous as well as muscular strength.  The timidity in him was strange in such a man.  What could it spring from?  It was not like ordinary shyness, the gaucherie of a big, awkward lout unaccustomed to woman’s society but able to be at his ease and boisterous in the midst of a crowd of men.  Domini thought that he would be timid even of men.  Yet it never struck her that he might be a coward, unmanly.  Such a quality would have sickened her at once, and she knew she would have at once divined it.  He did not hold himself very well, but was inclined to stoop and to keep his head low, as if he were in the habit of looking much on the ground.  The idiosyncrasy was rather ugly, and suggested melancholy to her, the melancholy of a man given to over-much meditation and afraid to face the radiant wonder of life.