The evening drew on in their silence and the dream was deeper now. All that Domini had felt when first she approached the parapet she felt more strangely, and she grasped, with physical and mental vision, not only the whole, but the innumerable parts of that which she looked on. She saw, fancifully, the circles widen in the pool of peace, but she saw also the things that had been hidden in the pool. The beauty of dimness, the beauty of clearness, joined hands. The one and the other were, with her, like sisters. She heard the voices from below, and surely also the voices of the stars that were approaching with the night, blending harmoniously and making a music in the air. The glowing sky and the glowing mountains were as comrades, each responsive to the emotions of the other. The lights in the rocky clefts had messages for the shadowy moon, and the palm trees for the thin, fire-tipped clouds about the west. Far off the misty purple of the desert drew surely closer, like a mother coming to fold her children in her arms.
The Jewess still danced upon the roof to the watching Zouaves, but now there was something mystic in her tiny movements which no longer roused in Domini any furtive desire not really inherent in her nature. There was something beautiful in everything seen from this altitude in this wondrous evening light.
Presently, without turning to her companion, she said:
“Could anything look ugly in Beni-Mora from here at this hour, do you think?”
Again there was the silence that seemed characteristic of this man before he spoke, as if speech were very difficult to him.
“I believe not, Madame.”
“Even that woman down there on that roof looks graceful—the one dancing for those soldiers.”
He did not answer. She glanced at him and pointed.
“Down there, do you see?”
She noticed that he did not follow her hand and that his face became stern. He kept his eyes fixed on the trees of the garden of the Gazelles near Cardinal Lavigerie’s statue and replied: