The Veiled Man by William le Queux

Lounging on a bench under the tall date-palms in the market-place of Hamman-el-Enf, I smoked a rank _cherbli_ in dreamy laziness. The day was dying; the blazing African sun sank, flooding the broad Bay of Tunis with its blood-red afterglow, and the giant palms cast their long, straight shadows over the hot, sun-blanched stones. There are no half lights in Northern Africa; all is either glaring brilliance or sombre shadow. Little twilight is there in that land of mosques and marabouts; night follows the death of day with astonishing rapidity. Even while I sat, darkness crept on; the squatting, chattering crowd of white-burnoused Moors and Arabs and red-fezzed negroes had dispersed, and the sunbaked little village seemed almost deserted. Suddenly the white figure of an Arab woman glided slowly and ghost-like from the deep shadow of the ilexes.

Like all others of her sex, she was enshrouded in a _haick_, and the lower portion of her face was hidden by her thick white veil, only a magnificent pair of black sparkling eyes, and a forehead upon which rows of gold sequins tinkled, being visible.