and Tunisia, the color of the native houses is always a penitential
shade of mud and ashes.

But Moulay Idriss, that afternoon, was as white as if its arcaded square
had been scooped out of a big cream cheese. The late sunlight lay like
gold-leaf on one side of the square, the other was in pure blue shade,
and above it, the crowded roofs, terraces and balconies packed with
women in bright dresses looked like a flower-field on the edge of a
marble quarry.

The bright dresses were as unusual a sight as the white walls, for the
average Moroccan crowd is the color of its houses. But the occasion
was a special one, for these feasts of the Hamadchas occur only twice a
year, in spring and autumn, and as the ritual dances take place out of
doors, instead of being performed inside the building of the
confraternity, the feminine population seizes the opportunity to burst
into flower on the housetops.

[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
Maroc_

Moulay-Idriss--the market-place]

It is rare, in Morocco, to see in the streets or the bazaars any women
except of the humblest classes, household slaves, servants, peasants
from the country or small tradesmen's wives; and even they (with the
exception of the unveiled Berber women) are wrapped in the prevailing
grave-clothes. The _filles de joie_ and dancing-girls whose brilliant
dresses enliven certain streets of the Algerian and Tunisian towns are
invisible, or at least unnoticeable, in Morocco, where life, on the
whole, seems so much less gay and brightly-tinted; and the women of the
richer classes, mercantile or aristocratic, never leave their harems
except to be married or buried. A throng of women dressed in light
colors is therefore to be seen in public only when some street festival
draws them to the roofs. Even then it is probable that the throng is
mostly composed of slaves, household servants, and women of the lower
_bourgeoisie_; but as they are all dressed in mauve and rose and pale
green, with long earrings and jewelled head-bands flashing through their
parted veils, the illusion, from a little distance, is as complete as
though they were the ladies in waiting of the Queen of Sheba; and that
radiant afternoon at Moulay Idriss, above the vine-garlanded square, and
against the background of piled-up terraces, their vivid groups were in
such contrast to the usual gray assemblages of the East that the scene
seemed like a setting for some ext