The floor was of fine sand, beaten flat and hard, and strewn with Eastern rugs of faint and delicate hues, dim greens and faded rose colours, grey-blues and misty topaz yellows. Round the white walls ran broad divans, also white, covered with prayer rugs from Bagdad, and large cushions, elaborately worked in dull gold and silver thread, with patterns of ibises and flamingoes in flight. In the four angles of the room stood four tiny smoking-tables of rough palm wood, holding hammered ash-trays of bronze, green bronze torches for the lighting of cigarettes, and vases of Chinese dragon china filled with velvety red roses, gardenias and sprigs of orange blossom. Leather footstools, covered with Tunisian thread-work, lay beside them. From the arches of the window-spaces hung old Moorish lamps of copper, fitted with small panes of dull jewelled glass, such as may be seen in venerable church windows. In a round copper brazier, set on one of the window-seats, incense twigs were drowsily burning and giving out thin, dwarf columns of scented smoke. Through the archways and the narrow doorway the dense walls of leafage were visible standing on guard about this airy hermitage, and the hot purple blossoms of the bougainvillea shed a cloud of colour through the bosky dimness. And still the flute of Larbi showered soft, clear, whimsical music from some hidden place close by. Domini looked at her host, who was standing by the doorway, leaning one arm against the ivory-white wall. “This is my first day in Africa,” she said simply. “You may imagine what I think of your garden, what I feel in it. I needn’t tell you. Indeed, I am sure the travellers you so kindly let in must often have worried you with their raptures.” “No,” he answered, with a still gravity which yet suggested kindness, “for I leave nearly always before the travellers come. That sounds a little rude? But you would not be in Beni-Mora at this season, Madame, if it could include you.” “I have come here for peace,” Domini replied simply. She said it because she felt as if it was already understood by her companion. Count Anteoni took down his arm from the white wall and pulled a branch of the purple flowers slowly towards him through the doorway. “There is peace--what is generally called so, at least--in Beni-Mora,” he answered rather slowly and meditatively. “That is to say, there is similarity of day with day, night with night. The sun shines untiringly over the desert, and the desert always hints at peace.” He let the flowers go, and they sprang softly back, and hung quivering in the space beyond his thin figure. Then he added: “Perhaps one should not say more than that.” “No.” Domini sat down for a moment. She looked up at him with her direct eyes and at the shaking flowers. The sound of Larbi’s flute was always in her ears. “But may not one think, feel a little more?” she asked.