She sipped her coffee, looking straight before her at the
stream. The magenta robe appeared once more coming out from the brown
wall. A yellow robe succeeded it, a scarlet, a deep purple. The girl,
with three curious young companions, stood in the sun examining the
foreigners with steady, unflinching eyes. Domini smiled grimly. Fate
gave her an opportunity. She beckoned to the girls. They looked at each
other but did not move. She held up a bit of silver so that the sun was
on it, and beckoned them again. The magenta robe was lifted above the
pretty knees it had covered. The yellow, the scarlet, the deep purple
robes rose too, making their separate revelations. And the four girls,
all staring at the silver coin, waded through the muddy water and stood
before Domini and Androvsky, blotting out the glaring sunshine with
their young figures. Their smiling faces were now eager and confident,
and they stretched out their delicate hands hopefully to the silver.
Domini signified that they must wait a moment.
She felt full of malice.
The girls wore many ornaments. She began slowly and deliberately to
examine them; the huge gold earrings that were as large as the little
ears that sustained them, the bracelets and anklets, the triangular
silver skewers that fastened the draperies across the gentle swelling
breasts, the narrow girdles, worked with gold thread, and hung with
lumps of coral, that circled the small, elastic waists.
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