A half-hour from the time he set his foot in Beni Hassan two dancing-
girls issued from the house of the ghdzeeyeh, dressed in shintiydn and
muslin tarah, anklets and bracelets, with gold coins about the forehead
--and one was Dicky Donovan. He had done the rare thing: he had trusted
absolutely that class of woman who is called a "rag" in that far country,
and a "drab" in ours. But he was a judge of human nature, and judges of
human nature know you are pretty safe to trust a woman who never trusts,
no matter how bad she is, if she has no influence over you. He used to
say that the better you are and the worse she is, the more you can trust
her. Other men may talk, but Dicky Donovan knows.

What Dicky's aunt, the Dowager Lady Carmichael, would have said to have
seen Dicky flaunting it in the clothes of a dancing-girl through the
streets of vile Beni Hassan, must not be considered. None would have
believed that his pink-and-white face and slim hands and staringly white
ankles could have been made to look so boldly handsome, so impeachable.
But henna in itself seems to have certain qualities of viciousness in its
brownish-red stain, and Dicky looked sufficiently abandoned. The risk
was great, however, for his Arabic was too good and he had to depend upon
the ghdzeeyeh's adroitness, on the peculiar advantage of being under the
protection of the mistress of the house as large as the Omdah's.

From one cafe to another they went. Here a snakecharmer gathered a
meagre crowd about him; there an 'A'l'meh, or singing-girl, lilted a
ribald song; elsewhere hashish-smokers stretched out gaunt, loathsome
fingers towards them; and a Sha'er recited the romance of Aboo Zeyd. But
Dicky noticed that none of the sheikhs, none of the great men of the
village, were at these cafes; only the very young, the useless, the
licentious, or the decrepit. But by flickering fires under the palm-