She saw a long and rather narrow chamber, with a paved floor, strewn with clean straw mats, blue-green walls, and an orange-colored ceiling. Close to the door was the coffee niche. At the opposite end of the room five musicians were squatting, four in a semicircle facing the coffee niche, the fifth alone, almost facing them. This fifth was Said Hitani, the famous flute-player of Constantine—a man at this time sixty-three years old. In front of him was a flat board, on which lay two freshly rolled cigarettes and several cigarette ends. Now and then he took his flute from his lips, replaced it with a lighted cigarette, smoked for a moment, then swiftly renewed his strange love-song, playing with a virile vigor as well as with airy daintiness and elaborate grace. Of his companions, one played a violin, held upright by the left hand, with its end resting on his stockinged foot; the second a species of large guitar; the third a derbouka; and the fourth a tarah, or native tambourine, ornamented with ten little discs of brass, which made a soft clashing sound when shaken. On the left of the room, down one side, squatted a row of Arabs with coffee-cups and cigarettes. By the door two more were playing a game of draughts. And opposite to the windows, on an Oriental rug, the long figure of Claude Heath was stretched out. He lay with his hat tilted to the left over one temple, his cheek on his left hand, listening intently to the music. On a wooden board beside him was some music paper, and now and then with a stylograph he jotted down some notes. He looked both emotional and thoughtful. Often his imaginative eyes rested on the small and hunched-up figure of Said Hitani, dressed in white, black, and gold, with a hood drawn over the head. Now and then he looked toward the window, and it seemed to Mrs. Shiffney then that his eyes met hers. But he saw nothing, except perhaps some Eastern vision summoned up by his lit imagination.
The music very gradually quickened and grew louder, became steadily more masculine, powerful, and fierce, till it sounded violent. The volume of tone produced by the players astonished Mrs. Shiffney. The wild vagaries of the flute seemed presently to be taking place in her brain. She drew close to the window, put her hands on the bars. At her feet the crouching Arabs never stirred. Behind her the cold wind came up from the gorge and the great open country with the sound of the rushing water.
At that moment she had the thing that she believed she lived for—a really keen sensation.
Suddenly, when the music had become almost intolerably exciting, when the players seemed possessed, and noise and swiftness to rush together like foes to the attack, the flute wavered, ran up to a height, cried out like a thing martyred; the violin gave forth a thin scream; on the derbouka the brown fingers of the player pattered with abrupt feebleness; the guitar died away; the little brass discs shivered and fell together. Another thin cry from the flute upon some unknown height, and there was silence, while Claude wrote furiously, and the musicians began to smoke.
"AT HER FEET THE CROUCHING ARABS
NEVER STIRRED"—[Page 258]
"Now I'll go in!" said Mrs. Shiffney to Amor.
He led the way and she followed. Claude glanced up, stared for a moment, then sprang up.
"Mrs. Shiffney!"