at him.  He leaped from the seat and screamed.  Suzanne echoed his cry.  Then the whole room was a turmoil of white garments and moving limbs.  In an instant everybody seemed to be leaping, calling out, grasping, struggling.  Domini tried to get up, but she was hemmed in, and could not make a movement upward or free her arms, which were pressed against her sides by the crowd around her.  For a moment she thought she was going to be severely hurt or suffocated.  She did not feel afraid, but only indignant, like a boy who has been struck in the face and longs to retaliate.  Someone screamed again.  It was Hadj.  Suzanne was on her feet, but separated from her mistress.  Batouch’s arm was round her.  Domini put her hands on the bench and tried to force herself up, violently setting her broad shoulders against the Arabs who were towering over her and covering her head and face with their floating garments as they strove to see the fight between Hadj and the dancer.  The heat almost stifled her, and she was suddenly aware of a strong musky smell of perspiring humanity.  She was beginning to pant for breath when she felt two burning, hot, hard hands come down on hers, fingers like iron catch hold of hers, go under them, drag up her hands.  She could not see who had seized her, but the life in the hands that were on hers mingled with the life in her hands like one fluid with another, and seemed to pass on till she felt it in her body, and had an odd sensation as if her face had been caught in a fierce grip, and her heart too.

Another moment and she was on her feet and out in the moonlit alley between the little white houses.  She saw the stars, and the painted balconies crowded with painted women looking down towards the cafe she had left and chattering in shrill voices.  She saw the patrol of Tirailleurs Indigenes marching at the double to the doorway in which the Arabs were still struggling.  Then she saw that the traveller was beside her.  She was not surprised.

“Thank you for getting me out,” she said rather bluntly.  “Where’s my maid?”

“She got away before us with your guide, Madame.”

He held up his hands and looked at them hard, eagerly, questioningly.

“You weren’t hurt?”

He dropped his hands quickly.  “Oh, no, it wasn’t——­”

He broke off the sentence and was silent.  Domini stood still, drew a long breath and laughed.  She still felt angry and laughed to control herself.  Unless she could be amused at this episode she knew that she was capable of going back to the door of the cafe and hitting out right and left at the men who had nearly suffocated her.  Any violence done to her body, even an unintentional push against her in the street—­if there was real force in it—­seemed to let loose a devil in her, such a devil as ought surely only to dwell inside a man.

“What people!” she said.  “What wild creatures!”

She laughed again.  The patrol pushed its way roughly in at the doorway.