Irena was quite close now.  She seemed so wrapped in the ecstasy of the dance that it did not occur to Domini at first that she was imitating the Ouled Nail who had laid her greasy head upon the stranger’s knees.  The abandonment of her performance was so great that it was difficult to remember its money value to her and to Tahar, the fair Kabyle.  Only when she was actually opposite to them and stayed there, still performing her shuddering dance, still holding the daggers above her head, did Domini realise that those half-closed, passionate eyes had marked the stranger woman, and that she must add one to the stream of golden coins.  She took out her purse but did not give the money at once.  With the pitiless scrutiny of her sex she noticed all the dancer’s disabilities.  She was certainly young, but she was very worn.  Her mouth drooped.  At the corners of her eyes there were tiny lines tending downward.  Her forehead had what Domini secretly called a martyred look.  Nevertheless, she was savage and triumphant.  Her thin body suggested force; the way she held herself consuming passion.  Even so near at hand, even while she was pausing for money, and while her eyes were, doubtless, furtively reading Domini, she shed round her a powerful atmosphere, which stirred the blood, and made the heart leap, and created longing for unknown and violent things.  As Domini watched her she felt that Irena must have lived at moments magnificently, that despite her almost shattered condition and permanent weariness—­only cast aside for the moment of the dance—­she must have known intense joys, that so long as she lived she would possess the capacity for knowing them again.  There was something burning within her that would burn on so long as she was alive, a spark of nature that was eternally red hot.  It was that spark which made her the idol of the Arabs and shed a light of beauty through her haggard frame.

The spirit blazed.

Domini put her hand at last into her purse and took out a piece of gold.  She was just going to give it to Irena when the white bundle that was Hadj made a sudden, though slight, movement, as if the thing inside it had shivered.  Irena noticed it with her half-closed eyes.  Domini leaned forward and held out the money, then drew back startled.  Irena had changed her posture abruptly.  Instead of keeping her head thrown back and exposing her long throat, she lifted it, shot it forward.  Her meagre bosom almost disappeared as she bent over.  Her arms fell to her sides.  Her eyes opened wide and became full of a sharp, peering intensity.  Her vision and dreams dropped out of her.  Now she was only fierce and questioning, and horribly alert.  She was looking at the white bundle.  It shifted again.  She sprang upon it, showing her teeth, caught hold of it.  With a swift turn of her thin hands she tore back the hood, and out of the bundle came Hadj’s head and face livid with fear.  One of the daggers flashed and came up