But was it everything then?  And if it was so much to her already, in a night and a day, what would it be when she knew it, what would it be to her after many nights and many days?  She began to feel a sort of terror mingled with the most extraordinary attraction she had ever known.

Hadj crouched right back against the wall.  The voice of the Jewess ceased in a shout.  The hautboys stopped playing.  Only the tomtoms roared.

“Hadj can be happy now,” observed Batouch in a voice of almost satisfaction, “for Irena is going to dance.  Look!  There is the little Miloud bringing her the daggers.”

An Arab boy, with a beautiful face and a very dark skin, slipped on to the platform with two long, pointed knives in his hand.  He laid them on the table before Irena, between the bouquets of orange blossom, jumped lightly down and disappeared.

Directly the knives touched the table the hautboy players blew a terrific blast, and then, swelling the note, till it seemed as if they must burst both themselves and their instruments, swung into a tremendous and magnificent tune, a tune tingling with barbarity, yet such as a European could have sung or written down.  In an instant it gripped Domini and excited her till she could hardly breathe.  It poured fire into her veins and set fire about her heart.  It was triumphant as a great song after war in a wild land, cruel, vengeful, but so strong and so passionately joyous that it made the eyes shine and the blood leap, and the spirit rise up and clamour within the body, clamour for utter liberty, for action, for wide fields in which to roam, for long days and nights of glory and of love, for intense hours of emotion and of life lived with exultant desperation.  It was a melody that seemed to set the soul of Creation dancing before an ark.  The tomtoms accompanied it with an irregular but rhythmical roar which Domini thought was like the deep-voiced shouting of squadrons of fighting men.

Irena looked wearily at the knives.  Her expression had not changed, and Domini was amazed at her indifference.  The eyes of everyone in the room were fixed upon her.  Even Suzanne began to be less virginal in appearance under the influence of this desert song of triumph.  Domini did not let her eyes stray any more towards the stranger.  For the moment indeed she had forgotten him.  Her attention was fastened upon the thin, consumptive-looking creature who was staring at the two knives laid upon the table.  When the great tune had been played right through once, and a passionate roll of tomtoms announced its repetition, Irena suddenly shot out her tiny arms, brought her hands down on the knives, seized them and sprang to her feet.  She had passed from lassitude to vivid energy with an abruptness that was almost demoniacal, and to an energy with which both mind and body seemed to blaze.  Then, as the hautboys screamed out the tune once more, she held the knives above her head and danced.