She knew that every nerve in her body was beating time to the sweetness of a melody that could suddenly pluck on the heartstrings and bring one near to tears and then crash wildly into a crescendo of rising exhilaration, dragging one high towards the sky in its triumphal ecstasy.

How long she sat there in the blanket-covered chair she had no idea, so intent that she did not notice the couples creeping away into the shadows to lie mouth to mouth and breast to breast in the soft grass.

She did not understand either that the dances had grown not only wilder but more erotic until the last thin veneer of civilisation was being shed as one might throw away a superfluous cloak and beneath find only the primitive natural desire of a man for a woman and a woman for a man.

“I think we should go.”

El Diablo spoke quietly and Skye started at his words.

For a moment she looked at him, hardly comprehending what he said.

Her eyes were wide and shining, her lips parted and her cheeks flushed in the light of the fire.

“I said we should go now,” El Diablo repeated.

She felt as if he dragged her back to earth from some enchanted Heaven.

“No! No, not yet!”

Skye pleaded and then, as El Diablo looked round, she followed his gaze and saw for the first time the couples lying in the shadows, the abandonment of those who still sat round the fire, the frenzy of the dancers, a dozen or more of them now, twisting their bodies, silhouetted in the wildest contortions against the leaping flames.

Almost mechanically Skye rose to her feet and then El Diablo’s hand was on her arm and he was leading her away along the path that led back to the camp.

There was no one to bid them goodnight and indeed as they went it seemed to Skye that the music and noise of the merry-makers grew louder and less restrained.

In the moonlight it was easy to see the outline of the huts, the pointed tops of the tents and the still emptiness of the camp.

The openings of the caves above looked like great dark eyes peering out of the solid rock. A dog barked at their approach, otherwise there was only silence and, looking up at the rocky cliffs, Skye thought for the first time that they resembled the burial places of the dead that she had seen in Egypt.

She felt herself shiver at the thought. There was something eerie tonight in remembering that these caves had been there for centuries and that men had come and gone while the caves remained.

And yet some singing within her heart, beating there because it had been aroused by the passion of the music, told Skye that such thoughts need not be sad.

She did not know why, but tonight, if at no other time, she was convinced of immortality.