As they passed the sand-diviner’s house Domini saw his spectral figure standing under the yellow light of the hanging lantern in the middle of his carpet shop, which was lined from floor to ceiling with dull red embroideries and dim with the fumes of an incense brazier.  He was talking to a little boy, but keeping a wary eye on the street, and he came out quickly, beckoning with his long hands, and calling softly, in a half-chuckling and yet authoritative voice: 

“Venez, Madame, venez!  Come! come!”

Suzanne seized Domini’s arm.

“Not to-night!” Domini called out.

“Yes, Madame, to-night.  The vie of Madame is there in the sand to-night.  Je la vois, je la vois.  C’est la dans le sable to-night.”

The moonlight showed the wound on his face.  Suzanne uttered a cry and hid her eyes with her hands.  They went on towards the trees.  Hadj walked with hesitation.

“How loud the music is getting,” Domini said to him.

“It will deafen Madame’s ears if she gets nearer,” said Hadj, eagerly.  “And the dancers are not for Madame.  For the Arabs, yes, but for a great lady of the most respectable England!  Madame will be red with disgust, with anger.  Madame will have mal-au-coeur.”

Batouch began to look like an idol on whose large face the artificer had carved an expression of savage ferocity.

“Madame is my client,” he said fiercely.  “Madame trusts in me.”

Hadj laughed with a snarl: 

“He who smokes the keef is like a Mehari with a swollen tongue,” he rejoined.

The poet looked as if he were going to spring upon his cousin, but he restrained himself and a slow, malignant smile curled about his thick lips like a snake.

“I shall show to Madame a dancer who is modest, who is beautiful, Hadj-ben-Ibrahim,” he said softly.

“Fatma is sick,” said Hadj, quickly.

“It will not be Fatma.”

Hadj began suddenly to gesticulate with his thin, delicate hands and to look fiercely excited.

“Halima is at the Fontaine Chaude,” he cried.

“Keltoum will be there.”

“She will not.  Her foot is sick.  She cannot dance.  For a week she will not dance.  I know it.”

“And—­Irena?  Is she sick?  Is she at the Hammam Salahine?”

Hadj’s countenance fell.  He looked at his cousin sideways, always showing his teeth.

“Do you not know, Hadj-ben-Ibrahim?”

“Ana ma ’audi ma nek oul lek!"[*] growled Hadj in his throat.

     [*] “I have nothing to say to you.”