But, in passing on, she had seen a
faint and blanched illumination; then another; the vague vision of an
aperture; a seated figure making a darkness against whiteness; a second
aperture and seated figure. She stopped and stood still. The man stood
still beside her.
The alley was an alley of women. In every house on either side of the
way a similar picture of attentive patience was revealed: a narrow
Moorish archway with a wooden door set back against the wall to show a
steep and diminutive staircase winding up into mystery; upon the highest
stair a common candlestick with a lit candle guttering in it, and,
immediately below, a girl, thickly painted, covered with barbarous
jewels and magnificently dressed, her hands, tinted with henna, folded
in her lap, her eyes watching under eyebrows heavily darkened, and
prolonged until they met just above the bridge of the nose, to which a
number of black dots descended; her naked, brown ankles decorated with
large circlets of gold or silver. The candle shed upon each watcher a
faint light that half revealed her and left her half concealed upon her
white staircase bounded by white walls.
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