Here, alone, slipping in and
out among the crowd, she looked abandoned; the sight of her in her bare
white feet and the travesty of her dress was a wound. Her humility
screamed its violation, its debasement of her race; she woke the impulse
to screen her and hurry her away as if she were a woman walking in her
sleep. She had on her arm a sheaf of the _War Cry_. This was another
indignity; she offered them right and left, and no one had a pice for
her except one man, a sailor who refused the paper. When he rejoined his
companions there was a hoarse laugh, and the others turned their heads
to look after her.
The flower-dealer eyed his customers with contemptuous speculation,
seeing what had claimed their eyes. There was nothing new, the "mem"
passed every day at this hour. She did no harm and no good. He, too,
looked at her as she came closer, offering her paper to Alladiah Khan, a
man impatient in his religion, who refused it, mumbling in his beard.
With a gesture of appeal she pressed it on him, saying something. Then
Alladiah's green turban shook, his beard, dyed red in Mecca, waggled; he
raised his arm, and Laura, in white astonishment, darted from under it.
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