The little street, bright with the lamps of the small houses, from which projected wooden balconies painted in gay colours, and with the glowing radiance of the moon, was mysterious despite its gaiety, its obvious dedication to the cult of pleasure.  Alive with the shrieking sounds of music, the movement and the murmur of desert humanity made it almost solemn.  This crowd of boys and men, robed in white from head to heel, preserved a serious grace in its vivacity, suggested besides a dignified barbarity a mingling of angel, monk and nocturnal spirit.  In the distance of the moonbeams, gliding slowly over the dusty road with slippered feet, there was something soft and radiant in their moving whiteness.  Nearer, their pointed hoods made them monastical as a procession stealing from a range of cells to chant a midnight mass.  In the shadowy dusk of the tiny side alleys they were like wandering ghosts intent on unholy errands or returning to the graveyard.

On some of the balconies painted girls were leaning and smoking cigarettes.  Before each of the lighted doorways from which the shrill noise of music came, small, intent crowds were gathered, watching the performance that was going on inside.  The robes of the Arabs brushed against the skirts of Domini and Suzanne, and eyes stared at them from every side with a scrutiny that was less impudent than seriously bold.

“Madame!”

Hadj’s thin hand was pulling Domini’s sleeve.

“Well, what is it?”

“This is the best dancing-house.  The children dance here.”

Domini’s height enabled her to peer over the shoulders of those gathered before the door, and in the lighted distance of a white-walled room, painted with figures of soldiers and Arab chiefs, she saw a small wriggling figure between two rows of squatting men, two baby hands waving coloured handkerchiefs, two little feet tapping vigorously upon an earthen floor, for background a divan crowded with women and musicians, with inflated cheeks and squinting eyes.  She stood for a moment to look, then she turned away.  There was an expression of disgust in her eyes.

“No, I don’t want to see children,” she said.  “That’s too—­”

She glanced at her escort and did not finish.

“I know,” said Batouch.  “Madame wishes for the real ouleds.”

He led them across the street.  Hadj followed reluctantly.  Before going into this second dancing-house Domini stopped again to see from outside what it was like, but only for an instant.  Then a brightness came into her eyes, an eager look.

“Yes, take me in here,” she said.

Batouch laughed softly, and Hadj uttered a word below his breath.

“Madame will see Irena here,” said Batouch, pushing the watching Arabs unceremoniously away.

Domini did not answer.  Her eyes were fixed on a man who was sitting in a corner far up the room, bending forward and staring intently at a woman who was in the act of stepping down from a raised platform decorated with lamps and small bunches of flowers in earthen pots.