Chapter 3 - Page 2

on. Come.'

A large smile overspread his face. 'So soon! that's a good hearing,' said
he to himself. 'There will be an orgy to-night. I'll stand or fall by my
luck. Faith, it's time it came!' He deposited half of his funds in the hands
of his well-known friends Monsieur and Madame Binat, and ordered
himself a Zanzibar dance of the finest. Monsieur Binat was shaking with
drink, but Madame smiles sympathetically--
'Monsieur needs a chair, of course, and of course Monsieur will sketch;
Monsieur amuses himself strangely.'

Binat raised a blue-white face from a cot in the inner room. 'I
understand,' he quavered. 'We all know Monsieur. Monsieur is an artist,
as I have been.' Dick nodded. 'In the end,' said Binat, with gravity,
'Monsieur will descend alive into hell, as I have descended.' And he
laughed.

'You must come to the dance, too,' said Dick; 'I shall want you.'

'For my face? I knew it would be so. For my face? My God! and for my
degradation so tremendous! I will not. Take him away. He is a devil. Or
at least do thou, Celeste, demand of him more.' The excellent Binat began
to kick and scream.

'All things are for sale in Port Said,' said Madame. 'If my husband comes
it will be so much more. Eh, 'how you call--'alf a sovereign.'

The money was paid, and the mad dance was held at night in a walled
courtyard at the back of Madame Binat's house. The lady herself, in
faded mauve silk always about to slide from her yellow shoulders, played
the piano, and to the tin-pot music of a Western waltz the naked
Zanzibari girls danced furiously by the light of kerosene lamps. Binat sat
upon a chair and stared with eyes that saw nothing, till the whirl of the
dance and the clang of the rattling piano stole into the drink that took the
place of blood in his veins, and his face glistened. Dick took him by the
chin brutally and turned that face to the light. Madame Binat looked
over her shoulder and smiled with many teeth. Dick leaned against the
wall and sketched for an hour, till the kerosene lamps began to smell, and
the girls threw themselves panting on the hard-beaten ground. Then he
shut his book with a snap and moved away, Binat plucking feebly at his
elbow. 'Show me,' he whimpered. 'I too was once an artist, even I!' Dick
showed him the rough sketch. 'Am I that?' he screamed. 'Will you take
that away with you and show all the world that it is I,--Binat?' He
moaned and wept.

'Monsieur has paid for all,' said Madame. 'To the pleasure of seeing
Monsieur again.'

The courtyard gate shut, and Dick hurried up the sandy street to the
nearest gambling-hell, where he was well known. 'If the luck holds, it's
an omen; if I lose, I must stay here.' He placed his money picturesquely