The Arabs did not smile, but the deepness of their
attention seemed to increase like a cloud growing darker. All the
luminous eyes in the room were steadily fixed upon the man leaning
back against the hideous picture on the wall and the gaudy siren curved
almost into an arch before him. The musicians blew their hautboys and
beat their tomtoms more violently, and all things, Domini thought,
were filled with a sense of climax. She felt as if the room, all the
inanimate objects, and all the animate figures in it, were instruments
of an orchestra, and as if each individual instrument was contributing
to a slow and great, and irresistible crescendo. The stranger took his
part with the rest, but against his will, and as if under some terrible
compulsion.
His face was scarlet now, and his shining eyes looked down on the
dancer's throat and breast with a mingling of eagerness and horror.
Slowly she raised herself, turned, bent forwards quivering, and
presented her face to him, while the women twittered once more in
chorus. He still stared at her without moving. The hautboy players
prolonged a wailing note, and the tomtoms gave forth a fierce and dull
murmur almost like a death, roll.
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