A great gaunt Arab, one of the true desert men, almost black, with high cheek bones, hollow cheeks, fierce falcon’s eyes shining as if with fever, long and lean limbs hard as iron, dressed in a rough, sacklike brown garment, and wearing a turban bound with cords of camel’s hair, strode softly down the alley, slipped in front of Domini, and went up to the woman, holding out something in his scaly hand. There was a brief colloquy. The woman stretched her arm up the staircase, took the candle, held it to the man’s open hand, and bent over counting the money that lay in the palm. She counted it twice deliberately. Then she nodded. She got up, turned, holding the candle above her square headdress, and went slowly up the staircase followed by the Arab, who grasped his coarse draperies and lifted them, showing his bare legs. The two disappeared without noise into the darkness, leaving the stairway deserted, its white steps, its white walls faintly lit by the moon. The woman had not once looked at the man, but only at the money in his scaly hand. Domini felt hot and rather sick. She wondered why she had stood there watching. Yet she had not been able to turn away. Now, as she stepped back into the middle of the alley and walked on with the man beside her she wondered what he was thinking of her. She could not talk to him any more. She was too conscious of the lighted stairways, one after one, succeeding each other to right and left of them, of the still figures, of the watching eyes in which the yellow rays of the candles gleamed. Her companion did not speak; but as they walked he glanced furtively from one side to the other, then stared down steadily on the white road. When they turned to the right and came out by the gardens, and Domini saw the great tufted heads of the palms black against the moon, she felt relieved and was able to speak again. “I should like you to know that I am quite a stranger to all African things and people,” she said. “That is why I am liable to fall into mistakes in such a place as this. Ah, there is the hotel, and my maid on the verandah. I want to thank you again for looking after me.” They were at a few steps from the hotel door in the road. The man stopped, and Domini stopped too. “Madame,” he said earnestly, with a sort of hardly controlled excitement, “I--I am glad. I was ashamed--I was ashamed.” “Why?” “Of my conduct--of my awkwardness. But you will forgive it. I am not accustomed to the society of ladies--like you. Anything I have done I have not done out of rudeness. That is all I can say. I have not done it out of rudeness.” He seemed to be almost trembling with agitation. “I know, I know,” she said. “Besides, it was nothing.” “Oh, no, it was abominable. I understand that. I am not so coarse-fibred as not to understand that.” Domini suddenly felt that to take his view of the matter, exaggerated though it was, would be the kindest course, even the most delicate.