His blood ran with the song, pulse and pulse. The mute lightning came
down through the trees and bathed his soul. And, shivering a little,
he let his thoughts go for the first time to the strange and virgin
creature that awaited his coming there, somewhere, behind some blind
house wall, so near.

"Thou hast suffered exile. Now is thy reward prepared."

What a fool! What a fool he had been!

He wanted to run now. The lassitude of months was gone from his limbs.
He wanted to fling aside that clogging crowd, run, leap, arrive. How
long was this hour? Where was he? He tried to see the housetops to
know, but the glow was in his eyes. He felt the hands of his comrades
on his arms.

But now there was another sound in the air. His ears, strained to the
alert, caught it above the drums and voices--a thin, high ululation.
It came from behind high walls and hung among the leaves of the trees,
a phantom yodeling, the welcoming "_you-you-you-you_" of the women of
Islam.

Before him he saw that the crowd had vanished. Even the candles went
away. There was a door, and the door was open.

He entered, and no one followed. He penetrated alone into an empty
house of silence, and all around him the emptiness moved and the
silence rustled.

He traversed a court and came into a chamber where there was a light.
He saw a negress, a Sudanese duenna, crouching in a corner and staring
at him with white eyes. He turned toward the other side of the room.

She sat on a high divan, like a throne, her hands palms together, her
legs crossed. In the completeness of her immobility she might have
been a doll or a corpse. After the strict fashion of brides, her
eyebrows were painted in thick black arches, her lips drawn in
scarlet, her cheeks splashed with rose. Her face was a mask, and
jewels in a crust hid the flame of her hair. Under the stiff kohl of
their lids her eyes turned neither to the left nor to the right. She
seemed not to breathe. It is a dishonour for a maid to look or to
breathe in the moment when her naked face suffers for the first time
the gaze of the lord whom she has never seen.

A minute passed away.

"This is the thing that is mine!" A blinding exultation ran through
his brain and flesh. "Better this than the 'trust' of fools and
infidels! No question here of 'faith.' _Here I know_! I know that this
thing that is mine has not been bandied about by the eyes of all the
men in the world. I know that this perfume has neve