"Do you know what that made me think of, Boris?" Domini said, as the
red hand with its swiftly-moving fingers disappeared. "You'll smile,
perhaps, and I scarcely know why. It made me think of the Devil in a
monastery."
Androvsky did not smile. Nor did he answer. She felt sure that he, too,
had been strongly affected by that glimpse of Sahara life. His silence
gave Batouch an opportunity of pouring forth upon them a flood of
poetical description of the dancing-girls of Amara, all of whom he
seemed to know as intimate friends. Before he ceased they came into the
city.
The road was still majestically broad. They looked with interest at the
first houses, one on each side of the way. And here again they were met
by the sharp contrast which was evidently to be the keynote of Amara.
The house on the left was European, built of white stone, clean,
attractive, but uninteresting, with stout white pillars of plaster
supporting an arcade that afforded shade from the sun, windows with
green blinds, and an open doorway showing a little hall, on the floor
of which lay a smart rug glowing with gay colours; that on the right,
before which the sand lay deep as if drifted there by some recent
wind of the waste, was African and barbarous, an immense and rambling
building of brown earth, brushwood and palm, windowless, with a
flat-terraced roof, upon which were piled many strange-looking objects
like things collapsed, red and dark green, with fringes and rosettes,
and tall sticks of palm pointing vaguely to the sky.
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