In the evening before the day of Domini's marriage with Androvsky there was a strange sunset, which attracted even the attention and roused the comment of the Arabs. The day had been calm and beautiful, one of the most lovely days of the North African spring, and Batouch, resting from the triumphant labour of superintending the final preparations for a long desert journey, augured a morning of Paradise for the departure along the straight road that led at last to Tombouctou. But as the radiant afternoon drew to its end there came into the blue sky a whiteness that suggested a heaven turning pale in the contemplation of some act that was piteous and terrible. And under this blanching heaven the desert, and all things and people of the oasis of Beni-Mora, assumed an aspect of apprehension, as if they felt themselves to be in the thrall of some power whose omnipotence they could not question and whose purpose they feared. This whiteness was shot, at the hour of sunset, with streaks of sulphur yellow and dappled with small, ribbed clouds tinged with yellow-green, a bitter and cruel shade of green that distressed the eyes as a merciless light distresses them, but these colours quickly faded, and again the whiteness prevailed for a brief space of time before the heavy falling of a darkness unpierced by stars. With this darkness came a faint moaning of hollow wind from the desert, a lamentable murmur that shuddered over the great spaces, crept among the palms and the flat- roofed houses, and died away at the foot of the brown mountains beyond the Hammam Salahine. The succeeding silence, short and intense, was like a sound of fear, like the cry of a voice lifted up in protest against the approach of an unknown, but dreaded, fate. Then the wind came again with a stronger moaning and a lengthened life, not yet forceful, not yet with all its powers, but more tenacious, more acquainted with itself and the deeds that it might do when the night was black among the vast sands which were its birth-place, among the crouching plains and the trembling palm groves that would be its battle-ground.
Batouch looked grave as he listened to the wind and the creaking of the palm stems one against another. Sand came upon his face. He pulled the hood of his burnous over his turban and across his cheeks, covered his mouth with a fold of his haik and stared into the blackness, like an animal in search of something his instinct has detected approaching from a distance.
Ali was beside him in the doorway of the Cafe Maure, a slim Arab boy, bronze-coloured and serious as an idol, who was a troubadour of the Sahara, singer of "Janat" and many lovesongs, player of the guitar backed with sand tortoise and faced with stretched goatskin. Behind them swung an oil lamp fastened to a beam of palm, and the red ashes glowed in the coffee niche and shed a ray upon the shelf of small white cups with faint designs of gold. In a corner, his black face and arms faintly relieved against the wall, an old negro crouched, gazing into vacancy with bulging eyes, and beating with a curved palm stem upon an oval drum, whose murmur was deep and hollow as the murmur of the wind, and seemed indeed its echo prisoned within the room and striving to escape.
"There is sand on my eyelids," said Batouch. "It is bad for to-morrow.
When Allah sends the sands we should cover the face and play the ladies' game within the cafe, we should not travel on the road towards the south."
Ali said nothing, but drew up his haik over his mouth and nose, and looked into the night, folding his thin hands in his burnous.
"Achmed will sleep in the Bordj of Arba," continued Batouch in a low, murmuring voice, as if speaking to himself. "And the beasts will be in the court. Nothing can remain outside, for there will be a greater roaring of the wind at Arba. Can it be the will of Allah that we rest in the tents to-morrow?"
Ali made no answer. The wind had suddenly died down.
The sand grains came no more against their eyelids and the folds of their haiks. Behind them the negro's drum gave out monotonously its echo of the wind, filling the silence of the night.
"Whatever Allah sends," Batouch went on softly after a pause, "Madame will go. She is brave as the lion. There is no jackal in Madame. Irena is not more brave than she is. But Madame will never wear the veil for a man's sake. She will not wear the veil, but she could give a knife- thrust if he were to look at another woman as he has looked at her, as he will look at her to-morrow. She is proud as a Touareg and there is fierceness in her. But he will never look at another woman as he will look at her to-morrow. The Roumi is not as we are."
The wind came back to join its sound with the drum, imprisoning the two Arabs in a muttering circle.
"They will not care," said Batouch. "They will go out into the storm without fear."
The sand pattered more sharply on his eyelids. He drew back into the cafe. Ali followed him, and they squatted down side by side upon the ground and looked before them seriously. The noise of the wind increased till it nearly drowned the noise of the negro's drum.
Presently the one-eyed owner of the cafe brought them two cups of coffee, setting the cups near their stockinged feet. They rolled two cigarettes and smoked in silence, sipping the coffee from time to time. Then Ali began to glance towards the negro. Half shutting his eyes, and assuming a languid expression that was almost sickly, he stretched his lips in a smile, gently moving his head from side to side. Batouch watched him. Presently he opened his lips and began to sing:
"The love of women is like a date that is golden in the sun, That is golden--The love of women is like a gazelle that comes to drink--To drink at the water springs--The love of women is like the nargileh, and like the dust of the keef That is mingled with tobacco and with honey.
Put the reed between thy lips, O loving man!
And draw dreams from the haschish that is the love of women!
Janat! Janat! Janat!"