. Never had she witnessed a performance so stilted, artificial, and absurd. She quite agreed with the remarks of her companions, who, after their first wonder at the building and the lighted stage, yawned openly and called it simple madness. Yet the entertainment was no bad one to the taste of Europe, as she knew from the applause of people in the unscreened boxes, where barefaced, brilliant women sat and stared about them. The mere existence of those women there in Cairo, transgressing every native rule of conduct, was an insult. The freshness even of the old ones made her conscious of decay. When the girls after the second act proposed to go, she agreed gladly. Muhammad screamed to stay, and had to be transported bodily by Barakah, while one of his young aunts held her hand upon his mouth. A very small boy at the time, he had supposed the scene was laid in hell, and all the hideous screams of the performers denoted pangs of tortured infidels.