Western cities; wait, however, before you pour the last drop
from your vials of wrath and indignation until you have seen an Arab
dance "_al-fajr_" which, being translated, means the dawn. You can put
what interpretation you like upon it: the dawn of day, or love,
anything will do, but you most certainly ought not to watch it.

If, however, you persist in so doing, you should blush to the roots of
your hair--you will not, because it will be the perfect poetry of
motion you will be witnessing; also ought you, after the third
movement, to turn your back or flee the room--you will not, again,
because of the mocking sensuality which will keep you rooted where you
stand; again, you ought to stuff your ears against the throbbing of the
drum--but that will you not do because of the words of love which fall,
seemingly reft from the dancer's lips in the rapture of his movements.
It is the last word in sensual ecstasy, and should be prohibited for
public exhibition to Europeans, yet it is quite impossible to point at
any one movement and label it as the cause of the tumult within you.

But Hugh Carden Ali, standing under a palm, turned quickly when a
little sound of distress caught his ear, and put out his hand and
pulled the girl he had recognised in the dark by her perfume towards
him, so that the back of her head rested against his arm; and sensing
her nausea at the sight from which she had been trying to fly, and
knowing the sheer impossibility of keeping the eyes shut in a theatre,
he pulled his handkerchief from his sleeve and placed it across her
eyes.

Save for the back of her head resting just below his shoulder he did
not touch her, and if he bent his head so that the perfumed riot of her
curls swept his cheek, should it count as a grievous sin against him?

The stone beside each of us is quite likely to lie untouched throughout
our span of three-score plus ten.

At the last beat of the drum and just before the lights were switched
on, Damaris was alone, with a silken handkerchief in her hand, in one
corner of which, as she discovered later, was embroidered the Hawk of
Old Egypt.

CHAPTER XII

"_. . . Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays_."

OMAR KHAYYAM.

Hugh Carden Ali, with the dogs of Billi crushed in beside him, raced
back to his palace in Cairo and with the shaggy pair at his heels
passed to his side of the great house. His body-