As they travelled, she had many thoughts which pleased her—thoughts which could have come to her nowhere else except in the desert, and often she talked to herself, because M'Barka could not understand her feelings, and she did not wish to make Maieddine understand.

"Burning, burning," was the adjective which she repeated oftenest, in an almost awestruck whisper, as her eyes travelled over immense spaces; for she thought that the desert might have dropped out of the sun. The colour of sand and sky was colour on fire, blazing. The whole Sahara throbbed with the unimaginable fire of creative cosmic force, deep, vital orange, needed by the primitive peoples of the earth who had not risen high enough yet to deserve or desire the finer vibrations.

As she leaned out of the bassour, the heat of the sun pressed on her lightly veiled head, like the golden lid of a golden box. She could feel it as an actual weight; and invisible behind it a living power which could crush her in an instant, as the paw of a lion might crush a flower petal.

Africa itself was this savage power, fierce as fire, ever smouldering, sometimes flaming with the revolt of Islam against other creeds; but the heart of the fire was the desert. Only the shady seguias in the oasis towns cooled it, like children's fingers on a madman's forehead; or the sound of a boy's flute in a river bed, playing the music of Pan, changeless, monotonous yet thrilling, as the music of earth and all Nature.

There were tracts in the desert which colour-blind people might have hated; but Victoria grew to think the dreariest stretches beautiful; and even the occasional plagues of flies which irritated M'Barka beyond endurance, only made Victoria laugh.

Sometimes came caravans, in this billowing immensity between the M'Zab and Ouargla—city of Solomon, whither the Queen of Sheba rode on her mehari: caravans blazing red and yellow, which swept like slow lines of flame across the desert, going east towards the sunrise, or west where the sunset spreads over the sky like a purple fan opening, or the tail of a celestial peacock.

What Victoria had once imagined the desert to be of vast emptiness, and what she found it to be of teeming life, was like the difference between a gold-bright autumn leaf seen by the naked eye, and the same leaf swarming under a powerful microscope.

The girl never tired of following with her eyes the vague tracks of caravans that she could see dimly sketched upon the sand, vanishing in the distance, like lines traced on the water by a ship. She would be gazing at an empty horizon when suddenly from over the waves of the dunes would appear a dark fleet; a procession of laden camels like a flotilla of boats in a desolate sea.

They were very effective, as they approached across the desert, these silent, solemn beasts, but Victoria pitied them, because they were made to work till they fell, and left to die in the shifting sand, when no longer useful to their unloving masters.

"My poor dears, this is only one phase," she would say to them as they plodded past, their feet splashing softly down on the sand like big wet sponges, leaving heart-shaped marks behind, which looked like violets as the hollows filled up with shadow. "Wait till your next chance on earth. I'm sure it will make up for everything."

But Maieddine told her there was no need to be sorry for the sufferings of camels, since all were deserved. Once, he said, they had been men—a haughty tribe who believed themselves better than the rest of the world. They broke off from the true religion, and lest their schism spread, Allah turned the renegades into camels. He compelled them to bear the weight of their sins in the shape of humps, and also to carry on their backs the goods of the Faithful, whose beliefs they had trampled under foot. While keeping their stubbornness of spirit they must kneel to receive their loads, and rise at the word of command. Remembering their past, they never failed to protest with roarings, against these indignities, nor did their faces ever lose the old look of sullen pride. But, in common with the once human storks, they had one consolation. Their sins expiated, they would reincarnate as men; and some other rebellious tribe would take their place as camels.

Five days' journeying from Ghardaia brought the travellers to a desert world full of movement and interest. There were many caravans going northward. Pretty girls smiled at them from swaying red bassourahs, sitting among pots and pans, and bundles of finery. Little children in nests of scarlet rags, on loaded camels, clasped squawking cocks and hens, tied by the leg. Splendid Negroes with bare throats like columns of black marble sang strange, chanting songs as they strode along. White-clad Arabs whose green turbans told that they had been to Mecca, walked beside their young wives' camels. Withered crones in yellow smocks trudged after the procession, driving donkeys weighed down with sheepskins full of oil. Baby camels with waggling, tufted humps followed their mothers. Slim grey sloughis and Kabyle dogs quarrelled with each other, among flocks of black and white goats; and at night, the sky pulsed with the fires of desert encampments, rosy as northern lights.

Just before the walled city of Ouargla, Victoria saw her first mirage, clear as a dream between waking and sleeping. It was a salt lake, in which Guelbi and the other animals appeared to wade knee-deep in azure waves, though there was no water; and the vast, distant oasis hovered so close that the girl almost believed she had only to stretch out her hand and touch the trunks of the crowding palm trees.

M'Barka was tired, and they rested for two days in the strange Ghuara town, the "City of Roses," founded (according to legend), by Solomon, King of Jerusalem, and built for him by djenoum and angels in a single night. They lived as usual in the house of the Caid, whose beautiful twin daughters told Victoria many things about the customs of the Ghuara people, descendants of the ancient Garamantes. How much happier and freer they were than Arab girls, how much purer though gayer was the life at Ouargla, Queen of the Oases, than at any other less enlightened desert city; how marvellous was the moulet-el-rass, the dance cure for headache and diseases of the brain; how wonderful were the women soothsayers; and what a splendid thing it was to see the bridal processions passing through the streets, on the one day of the year when there is marrying and giving in marriage in Ouargla.

The name of the prettier twin was Zorah, and she had black curls which fell straight down over her brilliant eyes, under a scarlet head-dress. "Dost thou love Si Maieddine?" she asked the Roumia, with a kind of innocent boldness.

"As a friend who has been very kind," Victoria answered.

"Not as a lover, oh Roumia?" Zorah, like all girls of Ouargla, was proud of her knowledge of Arabic.

"No. Not as a lover."

"Is there then one of thine own people whom thou lovest as a lover, Rose of the West?"

"I have no lover, little white moon."

"Si Maieddine will be thy lover, whether thou desirest him or not."

"Thou mistakest, oh Zorah."

"I do not mistake. If thou dost not yet know I am right, thou wilt know before many days. When thou findest out all that is in his heart for thee, remember our talk to-day, in the court of oranges."

"I will tell thee thou wert wrong in this same court of oranges when I pass this way again without Si Maieddine."

The Ghuara girl shook her head, until her curls seemed to ring like bells of jet. "Something whispers to my spirit that thou wilt never again pass this way, oh Roumia; that never again will we talk together in this court of oranges."



XXXI

If it had not been for Zorah and her twin sister Khadijah, Maieddine would have said to himself at Ouargla, "Now my hour has come." But though his eyes saw not even the shadow of a woman in the Caid's house, his ears heard the laughter of young girls, in which Victoria's voice mingled; and besides, he knew, as Arabs contrive to know everything which concerns others, that his host had daughters. He was well aware of the freemasonry existing among the wearers of veils, the dwellers behind shut doors; and though Victoria was only a Roumia, the Caid's daughters would joyfully scheme to help her against a man, if she asked their help.

So he put the hour-hand of his patience a little ahead; and Victoria and he were outwardly on the same terms as before when they left Ouargla, and passed on to the region of the low dunes, shaped like the tents of nomads buried under sand, the region of beautiful jewelled stones of all colours, and the region of the chotts, the desert lakes, like sad, wide-open eyes in a dead face.

As they drew near to the Zaouia of Temacin, and the great oasis city of Touggourt, the dunes increased in size, surging along the horizon in turbulent golden billows. M'Barka knew that she was close to her old home, the ancient stronghold of her royal ancestors, those sultans who had owned no master under Allah; for though it was many years since she had come this way, she remembered every land-mark which would have meant nothing to a stranger. She was excited, and longed to point out historic spots to Victoria, of whom she had grown fond; but Maieddine had forbidden her to speak. He had something to say to the girl before telling her that they were approaching another city of the desert. Therefore M'Barka kept her thoughts to herself, not chatting even with Fafann; for though she loved Victoria, she loved Maieddine better. She had forgiven him for bringing her the long way round, sacrificing her to his wish for the girl's society, because the journey was four-fifths finished, and instead of being worse, her health was better. Besides, whatever Maieddine wanted was for the Roumia's good, or would be eventually.

When they were only a short march from Touggourt, and could have reached there by dark, Maieddine nevertheless ordered an early halt. The tents were set up by the Negroes among the dunes, where not even the tall spire of Temacin's mosque was visible. And he led the little caravan somewhat out of the track, where no camels were likely to pass within sight, to a place where there were no groups of black tents in the yellow sand, and where the desert, in all its beauty, appeared lonelier than it was in reality.

By early twilight the camp was made, and the Soudanese were preparing dinner. Never once in all the Sahara journey had there been a sunset of such magical loveliness, it seemed to Maieddine, and he took it as a good omen.

"If thou wilt walk a little way with me, Ourieda," he said, "I will show thee something thou hast never seen yet. When my cousin is rested, and it is time for supper, I will bring thee back."

Together they mounted and descended the dunes, until they could no longer see the camp or the friendly smoke of the fire, which rose straight up, a scarf of black gauze, against a sky of green and lilac shot with crimson and gold. It was not the first time that Victoria had strolled away from the tents at sunset with Maieddine, and she could not refuse, yet this evening she would gladly have stayed with Lella M'Barka.

The sand was curiously crisp under their feet as they walked, and the crystallized surface crackled as if they were stepping on thin, dry toast. By and by they stood still on the summit of a dune, and Maieddine took from the hood of his burnous a pair of field-glasses of the most modern make.

"Look round thee," he said. "I have had these with me since our start, but I saved them for to-day, to give thee a surprise."

Victoria adjusted the glasses, which were very powerful, and cried out at what she saw. The turmoil of the dunes became a battle of giants. Sand waves as high as the sky rushed suddenly towards her, towering far above her head, as if she were a fly in the midst of a stormy ocean. The monstrous yellow shapes came closing in from all sides, threatening to engulf her. She felt like a butterfly in a cage of angry lions.

"It is terrible!" she exclaimed, letting the glasses fall from her eyes. The cageful of lions sat down, calmed, but now that the butterfly had seen them roused, never could they look the same again.

The effect upon the girl was exactly what Maieddine had wanted. For once Victoria acted as he expected her to do in given circumstances. "She is only a woman after all," he thought.

"If thou wert alone in this sea of gold, abandoned, to find thine own way, with no guide but the stars, then indeed thou mightst say 'it is terrible,'" he answered. "For these waves roll between thee and the north, whence thou hast come, and still higher between thee and the desired end of thy journey. So high are they, that to go up and down is like climbing and descending mountains, one after another, all day, day after day. And beyond, where thou must soon go if thou art to find thy sister, there are no tracks such as those we have followed thus far. In these shifting sands, not only men and camels, but great caravans, and even whole armies have been lost and swallowed up for ever. For gravestones, they have only the dunes, and no man will know where they lie till the world is rolled up as a scroll in the hand of Allah."

Victoria grew pale.

"Always before thou hast tried to make me love the desert," she said, slowly. "If there were anything ugly to see, thou hast bidden me turn my head the other way, or if I saw something dreadful thou wouldst at once begin to chant a song of happiness, to make me forget. Why dost thou wish to frighten me now?"

"It is not that I mean to give thee pain, Ourieda." Maieddine's voice changed to a tone that was gentle and pleading. "It is only that I would have thee see how powerless thou wouldst be alone among the dunes, where for days thou mightst wander, meeting no man. Or if thou hadst any encounter, it might be with a Touareg, masked in blue, with a long knife at his belt, and in his breast a heart colder than steel."

"I see well enough that I would be powerless alone," Victoria repeated. "Dost thou need to tell me that?"

"It may be not," said Maieddine. "But there is a thing I need to tell thee. My need is very sore. Because I have kept back the words I have burned to speak, my soul is on fire, oh Rose! I love thee. I die for thee. I must have thee for mine!"

He snatched both her hands in his, and crushed them against his lips. Then, carried away by the flower-like touch of her flesh, he let her hands go, and caught her to his heart, folding her in his burnous as if he would hide her even from the eye of the sun in the west. But she threw herself back, and pushed him away, with her palms pressed against his breast. She could feel under her hands a great pounding as of a hammer that would beat down a yielding wall.

"Thou art no true Arab!" she cried at him.

The words struck Maieddine in a vulnerable place; perhaps the only one.

He had expected her to exclaim, to protest, to struggle, and to beg that he would let her go. But what she said was a sharp, unlooked for stab. Above all things except his manhood, he prided himself on being a true Arab. Involuntarily he loosened his clasp of her waist, and she seized the chance to wrench herself free, panting a little, her eyes dilated. But as she twisted herself out of his arms, he caught her by the wrist. He did not grasp it tightly enough to hurt, yet the grip of his slim brown hand was like a bracelet of iron. She knew that she could not escape from it by measuring her strength against his, or even by surprising him with some quick movement; for she had surprised him once, and he would be on guard not to let it happen again. Now she did not even try to struggle, but stood still, looking up at him steadily. Yet her heart also was like a hammer that beat against a wall; and she thought of the endless dunes in whose turmoil she was swallowed up. If Stephen Knight were here—but he was far away; and Maieddine, whom she had trusted, was a man who served another God than hers. His thoughts of women were not as Stephen's thoughts.

"Think of thy white angel," she said. "He stands between thee and me."

"Nay, he gives thee to me," Maieddine answered. "I mean no harm to thee, but only good, as long as we both shall live. My white angel wills that thou shalt be my wife. Thou shalt not say I am no true Arab. I am true to Allah and my own manhood when I tell thee I can wait no longer."

"But thou art not true to me when thou wouldst force me against my will to be thy wife. We have drunk from the same cup. Thou art pledged to loyalty."

"Is it disloyal to love?"

"Thy love is not true love, or thou wouldst think of me before thyself."

"I think of thee before all the world. Thou art my world. I had meant to wait till thou wert in thy sister's arms; but since the night when I saw thee dance, my love grew as a fire grows that feeds upon rezin. If I offend thee, thou alone art to blame. Thou wert too beautiful that night. I have been mad since then. And now thou must give me thy word that thou wilt marry me according to the law of Islam. Afterwards, when we can find a priest of thine own religion, we will stand before him."

"Let my hand go, Si Maieddine, if thou wishest me to talk further with thee," Victoria said.

He smiled at her and obeyed; for he knew that she could not escape from him, therefore he would humour her a little. In a few more moments he meant to have her in his arms again.

His smile gave the girl no hope. She thought of Zorah and the court of the oranges.

"What wilt thou do if I say I will not be thy wife?" she asked, in a quiet voice; but there was a fluttering in her throat.

A spark lit in his eyes. The moon was rising now, as the sun set, and the two lights, silver and rose, touched his face, giving it an unreal look, as if he were a statue of bronze which had "come alive," Victoria thought, just as she had "come alive" in her statue-dance. He had never been so handsome, but his dark splendour was dreadful to her, for he did not seem like a human man whose heart could be moved to mercy.

For an instant he gave her no answer, but his eyes did not leave hers. "Since thou askest me that question, I would make thee change thy 'no' into 'yes.' But do not force me to be harsh with thee, oh core of my heart, oh soul of my soul! I tell thee fate has spoken. The sand has spoken—sand gathered from among these dunes. It is for that reason in part that I brought thee here."

"The sand-divining!" Victoria exclaimed. "Lella M'Barka told thee——"

"She told me not to wait. And her counsel was the counsel of my own heart. Look, oh Rose, where the moon glitters on the sand—the sand that twined thy life with mine. See how the crystals shape themselves like little hands of Fatma; and they point from thee to me, from me to thee. The desert has brought us together. The desert gives us to one another. The desert will never let us part."

Victoria's eyes followed his pointing gesture. The sand-crystals sparkled in the sunset and moonrise, like myriads of earthbound fireflies. Their bright facets seemed to twinkle at her with cold, fairy eyes, waiting to see what she would do, and she did not know. She did not know at all what she would do.



XXXII

"Dost thou wish me to hate thee, Si Maieddine?" she asked.

"I do not fear thy hate. When thou belongest to me, I will know how to turn it into love."

"Perhaps if I were a girl of thine own people thou wouldst know, but I see now that thy soul and my soul are far apart. If thou art so wicked, so treacherous, they will never be nearer together."

"The Koran does not teach us to believe that the souls of women are as ours."

"I have read. And if there were no other reason than that, it would be enough to put a high wall between me and a man of thy race."

For the first time Maieddine felt anger against the girl. But it did not make him love or want her the less.

"Thy sister did not feel that," he said, almost menacingly.

"Then the more do I feel it. Is it wise to use her as an argument?"

"I need no argument," he answered, sullenly. "I have told thee what is in my mind. Give me thy love, and thou canst bend me as thou wilt. Refuse it, and I will break thee. No! do not try to run from me. In an instant I should have thee in my arms. Even if thou couldst reach M'Barka, of what use to grasp her dress and cry to her for help against me? She would not give it. My will is law to her, as it must be to thee if thou wilt not learn wisdom, and how to hold me by a thread of silk, a thread of thy silky hair. No one would listen to thee. Not Fafann, not the men of the Soudan. It is as if we two were alone in the desert. Dost thou understand?"

"Thou hast made me understand. I will not try to run. Thou hast the power to take me, since thou hast forgotten thy bond of honour, and thou art stronger than I. Yet will I not live to be thy wife, Si Maieddine. Wouldst thou hold a dead girl in thine arms?"

"I would hold thee dead or living. Thou wouldst be living at first; and a moment with thine heart beating against mine would be worth a lifetime—perhaps worth eternity."

"Wouldst thou take me if—if I love another man?"

He caught her by the shoulders, and his hands were hard as steel. "Darest thou to tell me that thou lovest a man?"

"Yes, I dare," she said. "Kill me if thou wilt. Since I have no earthly help against thee, kill my body, and let God take my spirit where thou canst never come. I love another man."

"Tell me his name, that I may find him."

"I will not. Nothing thou canst do will make me tell thee."

"It is that man who was with thee on the boat."

"I said I would not tell thee."

He shook her between his hands, so that the looped-up braids of her hair fell down, as they had fallen when she danced, and the ends loosened into curls. She looked like a pale child, and suddenly a great tenderness for her melted his heart. He had never known that feeling before, and it was very strange to him; for when he had loved, it had been with passion, not with tenderness.

"Little white star," he said, "thou art but a babe, and I will not believe that any man has ever touched thy mouth with his lips. Am I right?"

"Yes, because he does not love me. It is I who love him, that is all," she answered naively. "I only knew how I really felt when thou saidst thou wouldst make me love thee, for I was so sure that never, never couldst thou do that. And I shall love the other man all my life, even though I do not see him again."

"Thou shalt never see him again. For a moment, oh Rose, I hated thee, and I saw thy face through a mist red as thy blood and his, which I wished to shed. But thou art so young—so white—so beautiful. Thou hast come so far with me, and thou hast been so sweet. There is a strange pity for thee in my breast, such as I have never known for any living thing. I think it must be that thou hast magic in thine eyes. It is as if thy soul looked out at me through two blue windows, and I could fall down and worship, Allah forgive me! I knew no man had kissed thee. And the man thou sayest thou lovest is but a man in a dream. This is my hour. I must not let my chance slip by, M'Barka told me. Yet promise me but one thing and I will hold thee sacred—I swear on the head of my father."

"What is the one thing?"

"That if thy sister Lella Saida puts thine hand in mine, thou wilt be my wife."

The girl's face brightened, and the great golden dunes, silvering now in moonlight, looked no longer like terrible waves ready to overwhelm her. She was sure of Saidee, as she was sure of herself.

"That I will promise thee," she said.

He looked at her thoughtfully. "Thou hast great confidence in thy sister."

"Perfect confidence."

"And I——" he did not finish his sentence. "I am glad I did not wait longer," he went on instead. "Thou knowest now that I love thee, that thou hast by thy side a man and not a statue. And I have not let my chance slip by, because I have gained thy promise."

"If Saidee puts my hand in thine."

"It is the same thing."

"Thou dost not know my sister."

"But I know——" Again he broke off abruptly. There were things it were better not to say, even in the presence of one who would never be able to tell of an indiscretion. "It is a truce between us?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Forget, then, that I frightened thee."

"Thou didst not frighten me. I did not know what to do, and I thought I might have to die without seeing Saidee. Yet I was not afraid, I think—I hope—I was not afraid."

"Thou wilt not have to die without seeing thy sister. Now, more than before, I shall be in haste to put thee in her charge. But thou wilt die without seeing again the face of that man whose name, which thou wouldst not speak, shall be as smoke blown before the wind. Never shalt thou see him on earth, and if he and I meet I will kill him."

Victoria shut her eyes, and pressed her hands over them. She felt very desolate, alone with Maieddine among the dunes. She would not dare to call Stephen now, lest he should hear and come. Nevertheless she could not be wholly unhappy, for it was wonderful to have learned what love was. She loved Stephen Knight.

"Thou wilt let me go back to M'Barka?" she said to Maieddine.

"I will take thee back," he amended. "Because I have thy promise."



XXXIII

On a flat white roof, which bubbled up here and there in rounded domes, a woman stood looking out over interminable waves of yellow sand, a vast golden silence which had no end on her side of the horizon, east, west, north, or south.

No veil hid her face, but folds of thin woollen stuff beautifully woven, and dyed blue, almost as dark as indigo, fell from her head nearly to her feet, over a loose robe of orange-red, cut low in the neck, with sleeves hiding the elbows. She looked towards the west, shading her eyes with her hand: and the sun near its setting streamed over her face and hair, chiselling her features in marble, brightening her auburn hair to fiery gold, giving her brown eyes the yellow tints of a topaz, or of the amber beads which hung in a long chain, as far down as her knees.

From the white roof many things could be seen besides the immense monotonous dunes along whose ridges orange fire seemed to play unceasingly against the sky.

There was the roof of the Zaouia mosque, with its low, white domes grouped round the minaret, as somewhere below the youngest boys of the school grouped round the taleb, or teacher. On the roof of the mosque bassourah frames were in the making, splendid bassourahs, which, when finished, would be the property of the great marabout, greatest of all living marabouts, lord of the Zaouia, lord of the desert and its people, as far as the eye could reach, and farther.

There were other roofs, too, bubbling among the labyrinth of square open courts and long, tunnel-like, covered and uncovered corridors which formed the immense, rambling Zaouia, or sacred school of Oued Tolga. Things happened on these roofs which would have interested a stranger, for there was spinning of sheep's wool, making of men's burnouses, fashioning of robes for women, and embroidering of saddles; but the woman who looked towards the west with the sun in her eyes was tired of the life on sun-baked roofs and in shadowed courts.

The scent of orange blossoms in her own little high-walled garden came up to her; yet she had forgotten that it was sweet, for she had never loved it. The hum of the students' voices, faintly heard through the open-work of wrought-iron windows, rasped her nerves, for she had heard it too often; and she knew that the mysterious lessons, the lessons which puzzled her, and constantly aroused her curiosity, were never repeated aloud by the classes, as were these everlasting chapters of the Koran.

Men sleeping on benches in the court of the mosque, under arches in the wall, waked and drank water out of bulging goatskins, hanging from huge hooks. Pilgrims washed their feet in the black marble basin of the trickling fountain, for soon it would be time for moghreb, the prayer of the evening.

Far away, eighteen miles distant across the sands, she could see the twenty thousand domes of Oued Tolga, the desert city which had taken its name from the older Zaouia, and the oued or river which ran between the sacred edifice on its golden hill, and the ugly toub-built village, raised above danger of floods on a foundation of palm trunks.

Far away the domes of the desert city shimmered like white fire in the strange light that hovers over the Sahara before the hour of sunset. Behind those distant, dazzling bubbles of unearthly whiteness, the valley-like oases of the southern desert, El Souf, dimpled the yellow dunes here and there with basins of dark green. Near by, a little to the left of the Zaouia hill, such an oasis lay, and the woman on the white roof could look across a short stretch of sand, down into its green depths. She could watch the marabout's men repairing the sloping sand-walls with palm trunks, which kept them from caving in, and saved the precious date-palms from being engulfed in a yellow tide. It was the marabout's own private oasis, and brought him in a large income every year. But everything was the marabout's. The woman on the roof was sick to death of his riches, his honours, his importance, for she was the marabout's wife; and in these days she loved him as little as she loved the orange garden he had given her, and all the things that were hers because she was his.

It was very still in the Zaouia of Oued Tolga. The only sound was the droning of the boys' voices, which came faintly from behind iron window-gratings below, and that monotonous murmur emphasized the silence, as the humming of bees in a hive makes the stillness of a garden in summer more heavy and hot.

No noises came from the courts of the women's quarters, or those of the marabout's guests, and attendants, and servants; not a voice was raised in that more distant part of the Zaouia where the students lived, and where the poor were lodged and fed for charity's sake. No doubt the village, across the narrow river in its wide bed, was buzzing with life at this time of day; but seldom any sound there was loud enough to break the slumberous silence of the great Zaouia. And the singing of the men in the near oasis who fought the sand, the groaning of the well-cords woven of palm fibre which raised the buckets of hollowed palm-trunks, was as monotonous as the recitation of the Koran. The woman had heard it so often that she had long ago ceased to hear it at all.

She looked westward, across the river to the ugly village with the dried palm-leaves on its roofs, and far away to the white-domed city, the dimpling oases and the mountainous dunes that towered against a flaming sky; then eastward, towards the two vast desert lakes, or chotts, one of blue water, the other of saltpetre, which looked bluer than water, and had pale edges that met the sand like snow on gold. Above the lake of water suddenly appeared a soaring line of white, spreading and mounting higher, then turning from white to vivid rose. It was the flamingoes rising and flying over the chott, the one daily phenomenon of the desert which the woman on the roof still loved to watch. But her love for the rosy line against the blue was not entirely because of its beauty, though it was startlingly beautiful. It meant something for which she waited each evening with a passionate beating of her heart under the orange-coloured robe and the chain of amber beads. It meant sunset and the coming of a message. But the doves on the green tiled minaret of the Zaouia mosque had not begun yet to dip and wheel. They would not stir from their repose until the muezzin climbed the steps to call the hour of evening prayer, and until they flew against the sunset the message could not come.

She must wait yet awhile. There was nothing to do till the time of hope for the message. There was never anything else that she cared to do through the long days from sunrise to sunset, unless the message gave her an incentive when it came.

In the river-bed, the women and young girls had not finished their washing, which was to them not so much labour as pleasure, since it gave them their opportunity for an outing and a gossip. In the bed of shining sand lay coloured stones like jewels, and the women knelt on them, beating wet bundles of scarlet and puce with palm branches. The watcher on the roof knew that they were laughing and chattering together though she could not hear them. She wondered dimly how many years it was since she had laughed, and said to herself that probably she would never laugh again, although she was still young, only twenty-eight. But that was almost old for a woman of the East. Those girls over there, wading knee-deep in the bright water to fill their goatskins and curious white clay jugs, would think her old. But they hardly knew of her existence. She had married the great marabout, therefore she was a marabouta, or woman saint, merely because she was fortunate enough to be his wife, and too highly placed for them to think of as an earthly woman like themselves. What could it matter whether such a radiantly happy being were young or old? And she smiled a little as she imagined those poor creatures picturing her happiness. She passed near them sometimes going to the Moorish baths, but the long blue drapery covered her face then, and she was guarded by veiled negresses and eunuchs. They looked her way reverently, but had never seen her face, perhaps did not know who she was, though no doubt they had all heard and gossipped about the romantic history of the new wife, the beautiful Ouled Nail, to whom the marabout had condescended because of her far-famed, her marvellous, almost incredible loveliness, which made her a consort worthy of a saint.

The river was a mirror this evening, reflecting the sunset of crimson and gold, and the young crescent moon fought for and devoured, then vomited forth again by strange black cloud-monsters. The old brown palm-trunks, on which the village was built, were repeated in the still water, and seemed to go down and down, as if their roots might reach to the other side of the world.

Over the crumbling doorways of the miserable houses bleached skulls and bones of animals were nailed for luck. The red light of the setting sun stained them as if with blood, and they were more than ever disgusting to the watcher on the white roof. They were the symbols of superstitions the most Eastern and barbaric, ideas which she hated, as she was beginning to hate all Eastern things and people.

The streak of rose which meant a flock of flying flamingoes had faded out of the sky. The birds seemed to have vanished into the sunset, and hardly had they gone when the loud crystalline voice of the muezzin began calling the faithful to prayer. Work stopped for the day. The men and youths of the Zaouia climbed the worn stairs to the roof of the mosque, where, in their white turbans and burnouses, they prostrated themselves before Allah, going down on their faces as one man. The doves of the minaret—called Imams, because they never leave the mosque or cease to prostrate themselves, flying head downwards—began to wheel and cry plaintively. The moment when the message might come was here at last.

The white roof had a wall, which was low in places, in others very high, so high that no one standing behind it could be seen. This screen of whitewashed toub was arranged to hide persons on the roof from those on the roof of the mosque; but window-like openings had been made in it, filled in with mashrabeyah work of lace-like pattern; an art brought to Africa long ago by the Moors, after perfecting it in Granada. And this roof was not the only one thus screened and latticed. There was another, where watchers could also look down into the court of the fountain, at the carved doors taken from the Romans, and up to the roof of the mosque with all its little domes. From behind those other lace-like windows in the roof-wall, sparkled such eyes as only Ouled Nail girls can have; but the first watcher hated to think of those eyes and their wonderful fringe of black lashes. It was an insult to her that they should beautify this house, and she ignored their existence, though she had heard her negresses whispering about them.

While the faithful prayed, a few of the wheeling doves flew across from the mosque to the roof where the woman waited for a message. At her feet lay a small covered basket, from which she took a handful of grain. The dove Imams forgot their saintly manners in an unseemly scramble as the white hand scattered the seeds, and while they disputed with one another, complaining mournfully, another bird, flying straight to the roof from a distance, suddenly joined them. It was white, with feet like tiny branches of coral, whereas the doves from the mosque were grey, or burnished purple.

The woman had been pale, but when the bird fluttered down to rest on the open basket of grain, colour rushed to her face, as if she had been struck on each cheek with a rose. None of the doves of the mosque were tame enough to sit on the basket, which was close to her feet, though they sidled round it wistfully; but the white bird let her stroke its back with her fingers as it daintily pecked the yellow grains.

Very cautiously she untied a silk thread fastened to a feather under the bird's wing. As she did so it fluttered both wings as if stretching them in relief, and a tiny folded paper attached to the cord fell into the basket. Instantly the woman laid her hand over it. Then she looked quickly, without moving her head, towards the square opening at a corner of the roof where the stairway came up. No one was there. Nobody could see her from the roof of the mosque, and her roof was higher than any of the others, except that which covered the private rooms of the marabout. But the marabout was away, and no one ever came out on his roof when he was absent.

She opened the folded bit of white paper, which was little more than two inches square, and was covered on one side with writing almost microscopically small. The other side was blank, but the woman had no doubt that the letter was for her. As she read, the carrier-pigeon went on pecking at the seeds in the basket, and the doves of the mosque watched it enviously.

The writing was in French, and no name was at the beginning or the end.

"Be brave, my beautiful one, and dare to do as your heart prompts. Remember, I worship you. Ever since that wonderful day when the wind blew aside your veil for an instant at the door of the Moorish bath, the whole world has been changed for me. I would die a thousand deaths if need be for the joy of rescuing you from your prison. Yet I do not wish to die. I wish to live, to take you far away and make you so happy that you will forget the wretchedness and failure of the past. A new life will begin for both of us, if you will only trust me, and forget the scruples of which you write—false scruples, believe me. As he had a wife living when he married you, and has taken another since, surely you cannot consider that you are bound by the law of God or man? Let me save you from the dragon, as fairy princesses were saved in days of old. If I might speak with you, tell you all the arguments that constantly suggest themselves to my mind, you could not refuse. I have thought of more than one way, but dare not put my ideas on paper, lest some unlucky chance befall our little messenger. Soon I shall have perfected the cypher. Then there will not be the same danger. Perhaps to-morrow night I shall be able to send it. But meanwhile, for the sake of my love, give me a little hope. If you will try to arrange a meeting, to be settled definitely when the cypher is ready, twist three of those glorious threads of gold which you have for hair round the cord when you send the messenger back."

All the rosy colour had died away from the woman's face by the time she had finished reading the letter. She folded it again into a tiny square even smaller than before, and put it into one of the three or four little engraved silver boxes, made to hold texts from the Koran, which hung from her long amber necklace. Her eyes were very wide open, but she seemed to see nothing except some thought printed on her brain like a picture.

On the mosque roof a hundred men of the desert knelt praying in the sunset, their faces turned towards Mecca. Down in the fountain-court, the marabout's lazy tame lion rose from sleep and stretched himself, yawning as the clear voice of the muezzin chanted from the minaret the prayer of evening, "Allah Akbar, Allah il Allah, Mohammed r'soul Allah."

The woman did not know that she heard the prayer, for as her eyes saw a picture, so did her ears listen to a voice which she had heard only once, but desired beyond all things to hear again. To her it was the voice of a saviour-knight; the face she saw was glorious with the strength of manhood, and the light of love. Only to think of the voice and face made her feel that she was coming to life again, after lying dead and forgotten in a tomb for many years of silence.

Yes, she was alive now, for he had waked her from a sleep like death; but she was still in the tomb, and it seemed impossible to escape from it, even with the help of a saviour-knight. If she said "yes" to what he asked, as she was trying to make herself believe she had a moral and legal right to do, they would be found out and killed, that was all.

She was not brave. The lassitude which is a kind of spurious resignation poisons courage, or quenches it as water quenches fire. Although she hated her life, if it could be called life, had no pleasure in it, and had almost forgotten how to hope, still she was afraid of being violently struck down.

Not long ago a woman in the village had tried to leave her husband with a man she loved. The husband found out, and having shot the man before her eyes, stabbed her with many wounds, one for each traitorous kiss, according to the custom of the desert; not one knife-thrust deep enough to kill; but by and by she had died from the shock of horror, and loss of blood. Nobody blamed the husband. He had done the thing which was right and just. And stories like this came often to the ears of the woman on the roof through her negresses, or from the attendants at the Moorish bath.

The man she loved would not be shot like the wretched Bedouin, who was of no importance except to her for whom his life was given; but something would happen. He would be taken ill with a strange disease, of which he would die after dreadful suffering; or at best his career would be ruined; for the greatest of all marabouts was a man of immense influence. Because of his religious vow to wear a mask always like a Touareg, none of the ruling race had ever seen the marabout's features, yet his power was known far and wide—in Morocco; all along the caravan route to Tombouctou; in the capital of the Touaregs; in Algiers; and even in Paris itself.

She reminded herself of these things, and at one moment her heart was like ice in her breast; but at the next, it was like a ball of fire; and pulling out three long bright hairs from her head, she twisted them round the cord which the carrier-pigeon had brought. Before tying it under his wing again, she scattered more yellow seeds for the dove Imams, because she did not want them to fly away until she was ready to let her messenger go. Thus there was the less danger that the carrier-pigeon would be noticed. Only Noura, her negress, knew of him. Noura had smuggled him into the Zaouia, and she herself had trained him by giving him food that he liked, though his home was at Oued Tolga, the town.

The birds from the mosque had waited for their second supply, for the same programme had been carried out many times before, and they had learned to expect it.

When they finished scrambling for the grain which the white pigeon could afford to scorn, they fluttered back to the minaret, following a leader. But the carrier flew away straight and far, his little body vanishing at last as if swallowed up in the gold of the sunset. For he went west, towards the white domes of Oued Tolga.



XXXIV

Still the woman stood looking after the bird, but the sun had dropped behind the dunes, and she no longer needed to shade her eyes with her hand. There was nothing more to expect till sunset to-morrow, when something might or might not happen. If no message came, then there would be only dullness and stagnation until the day when the Moorish bath was sacredly kept for the great ladies of the marabout's household. There were but two of these, yet they never went to the bath together, nor had they ever met or spoken to one another. They were escorted to the bath by their attendants at different hours of the same day; and later their female servants were allowed to go, for no one but the women of the saintly house might use the baths that day.

The woman on the white roof in the midst of the golden silence gazed towards the west, though she looked for no event of interest; and her eyes fixed themselves mechanically upon a little caravan which moved along the yellow sand like a procession of black insects. She was so accustomed to search the desert since the days, long ago, when she had actually hoped for friends to come and take her away, that she could differentiate objects at greater distances than one less trained to observation. Hardly thinking of the caravan, she made out, nevertheless, that it consisted of two camels, carrying bassourahs, a horse and Arab rider, a brown pack camel, and a loaded mule, driven by two men who walked.

They had evidently come from Oued Tolga, or at least from that direction, therefore it was probable that their destination was the Zaouia; otherwise, as it was already late, they would have stopped in the city all night. Of course, it was possible that they were on their way to the village, but it was a poor place, inhabited by very poor people, many of them freed Negroes, who worked in the oases and lived mostly upon dates. No caravans ever went out from there, because no man, even the richest, owned more than one camel or donkey; and nobody came to stay, unless some son of the miserable hamlet, who had made a little money elsewhere, and returned to see his relatives. But on the other hand, numerous caravans arrived at the Zaouia of Oued Tolga, and hundreds of pilgrims from all parts of Islam were entertained as the marabout's guests, or as recipients of charity.

Dimly, as she detached her mind from the message she had sent, the woman began to wonder about this caravan, because of the bassourahs, which meant that there were women among the travellers. There were comparatively few women pilgrims to the Zaouia, except invalids from the town of Oued Tolga, or some Sahara encampment, who crawled on foot, or rode decrepit donkeys, hoping to be cured of ailments by the magic power of the marabout, the power of the Baraka. The woman who watched had learned by this time not to expect European tourists. She had lived for eight years in the Zaouia, and not once had she seen from her roof a European, except a French government-official or two, and a few—a very few—French officers. Never had any European women come. Tourists were usually satisfied with Touggourt, three or four days nearer civilisation. Women did not care to undertake an immense and fatiguing journey among the most formidable dunes of the desert, where there was nothing but ascending and descending, day after day; where camels sometimes broke their legs in the deep sand, winding along the fallen side of a mountainous dune, and where a horse often had to sit on his haunches, and slide with his rider down a sand precipice.

She herself had experienced all these difficulties, so long ago now that she had half forgotten how she had hated them, and the fate to which they were leading her. But she did not blame other women for not coming to Oued Tolga.

Occasionally some caid or agha of the far south would bring his wife who was ill or childless to be blessed by the marabout; and in old days they had been introduced to the marabouta, but it was years now since she had been asked, or even allowed, to entertain strangers. She thought, without any active interest, as she looked at the nodding bassourahs, growing larger and larger, that a chief was coming with his women, and that he would be disappointed to learn that the marabout was away from home. It was rather odd that the stranger had not been told in the city, for every one knew that the great man had gone a fortnight ago to the province of Oran. Several days must pass before he could return, even if, for any reason, he came sooner than he was expected. But it did not matter much to her, if there were to be visitors who would have the pain of waiting. There was plenty of accommodation for guests, and there were many servants whose special duty it was to care for strangers. She would not see the women in the bassourahs, nor hear of them unless some gossip reached her through the talk of the negresses.

Still, as there was nothing else which she wished to do, she continued to watch the caravan.

By and by it passed out of sight, behind the rising ground on which the village huddled, with its crowding brown house-walls that narrowed towards the roofs. The woman almost forgot it, until it appeared again, to the left of the village, where palm logs had been laid in the river bed, making a kind of rough bridge, only covered when the river was in flood. It was certain now that the travellers were coming to the Zaouia.

The flame of the sunset had died, though clouds purple as pansies flowered in the west. The gold of the dunes paled to silver, and the desert grew sad, as if it mourned for a day that would never live again. Far away, near Oued Tolga, where the white domes of the city and the green domes of the oasis palms all blended together in shadow, fires sprang up in the camps of nomads, like signals of danger.

The woman on the roof shivered. The chill of the coming night cooled her excitement. She was afraid of the future, and the sadness which had fallen upon the desert was cold in her heart. The caravan was not far from the gate of the Zaouia, but she was tired of watching it. She turned and went down the narrow stairs that led to her rooms, and to the little garden where the fragrance of orange blossoms was too sweet.



XXXV

The caravan stopped in front of the Zaouia gate. There were great iron doors in a high wall of toub, which was not much darker in colour than the deep gold of the desert sand; and because it was after sunset the doors were closed.

One of the Negroes knocked, and called out something inarticulate and guttural in a loud voice.

Almost at once the gate opened, and a shadowy figure hovered inside. A name was announced, which was instantly shouted to a person unseen, and a great chattering began in the dusk. Men ran out, and one or two kissed the hand of the rider on the white horse. They explained volubly that the lord was away, but the newcomer checked them as soon as he could, saying that he had heard the news in the city. He had with him ladies, one a relative of his own, another who was connected with the great lord himself, and they must be entertained as the lord would wish, were he not absent.

The gates, or doors, of iron were thrown wide open, and the little procession entered a huge open court. On one side was accommodation for many animals, as in a caravanserai, with a narrow roof sheltering thirty or forty stalls; and here the two white meharis were made to kneel, that the women might descend from their bassourahs. There were three, all veiled, but the arms of one were bare and very brown. She moved stiffly, as if cramped by sitting for a long time in one position; nevertheless, she supported her companion, whose bassour she had shared. The two Soudanese Negroes remained in this court with their animals, which the servants of the Zaouia, began helping them to unload; but the master of the expedition, with the two ladies of his party and Fafann, was now obliged to walk. Several men of the Zaouia acted as their guides, gesticulating with great respect, but lowering their eyelids, and appearing not to see the women.

They passed through another court, very large, though not so immense as the first, for no animals were kept there. Instead of stalls for camels and horses, there were roughly built rooms for pilgrims of the poorer class, with little, roofless, open-sided kitchens, where they could cook their own food. Beyond was the third court, with lodging for more important persons, and then the travellers were led through a labyrinth of corridors, some roofed with palm branches, others open to the air, and still more covered in with the toub blocks of which the walls were built. Along the sides were crumbling benches of stucco, on which old men lay rolled up in their burnouses; or here and there a door of rotting palm wood hung half open, giving a glimpse into a small, dim court, duskily red with the fire of cooking in an open-air kitchen. From behind these doors came faint sounds of chanting, and spicy smells of burning wood and boiling peppers. It was like passing through a subterranean village; and little dark children, squatting in doorways, or flattening their bodies against palm trunks which supported palm roofs, or flitting ahead of the strangers, in the thick, musky scented twilight, were like shadowy gnomes.

By and by, as the newcomers penetrated farther into the mysterious labyrinth of the vast Zaouia, the corridors and courts became less ruined in appearance. The walls were whitewashed; the palm-wood doors were roughly carved and painted in bright colours, which could be seen by the flicker of lamps set high in little niches. Each tunnel-like passage had a carved archway at the end, and at last they entered one which was closed in with beautiful doors of wrought iron.

Through the rich network they could see into a court where everything glimmered white in moonlight. They had come to the court of the mosque, which had on one side an entrance to the private house of the marabout, the great Sidi El Hadj Mohammed ben Abd-el-Kader.

* * * * * * *

"Lella Saida, oh light of the young moon, if it please thee, thou hast two guests come from very far off," announced an old negress to the woman who had been looking out over the golden silence of the desert.

It was an hour since she had come down from the roof, and having eaten a little bread, with soup, she lay on a divan writing in a small book. Several tall copper lamps with open-work copper shades, jewelled and fringed with coloured glass, gave a soft and beautiful light to the room. It had pure white walls, round which, close to the ceiling, ran a frieze of Arab lettering, red, and black, and gold. The doors and window-blinds and little cupboards were of cedar, so thickly inlaid with mother-o'-pearl, that only dark lines of the wood defined the white patterning of leaves and flowers.

The woman had thrown off the blue drapery that had covered her head, and her auburn hair glittered in the light of the lamp by which she wrote. She looked up, vexed.

"Thou knowest, Noura, that for years I have received no guests," she said, in a dialect of the Soudan, in which most Saharian mistresses of Negro servants learn to talk. "I can see no one. The master would not permit me to do so, even if I wished it, which I do not."

"Pardon, loveliest lady. But this is another matter. A friend of our lord brings these visitors to thee. One is kin of his. She seeks to be healed of a malady, by the power of the Baraka. But the other is a Roumia."

The wife of the great marabout shut the book in which she had been writing, and her mind travelled quickly to the sender of the carrier-pigeon. A European woman, the first who had ever come to the Zaouia in eight years! It must be that she had a message from him. Somehow he had contrived this visit. She dared ask no more questions.

"I will see these ladies," she said. "Let them come to me here."

"Already the old one is resting in the guest-house," answered the negress. "She has her own servant, and she asks to see thee no earlier than to-morrow, when she has rested, and is able to pay thee her respects. It is the other, the young Roumia, who begs to speak with thee to-night."

The wife of the marabout was more certain than ever that her visitor must come from the sender of the pigeon. She was glad of an excuse to talk with his messenger alone, without waiting.

"Go fetch her," she directed. "And when thou hast brought her to the door I shall no longer need thee, Noura."

Her heart was beating fast. She dreaded some final decision, or the need to make a decision, yet she knew that she would be bitterly disappointed if, after all, the European woman were not what she thought. She shut up the diary in which she wrote each night, and opening one of the wall cupboards near her divan, she put it away on a shelf, where there were many other small volumes, a dozen perhaps. They contained the history of her life during the last nine years, since unhappiness had isolated her, and made it necessary to her peace of mind, almost to her sanity, to have a confidant. She closed the inlaid doors of the cupboard, and locked them with a key which hung from a ribbon inside her dress.

Such a precaution was hardly needed, since the writing was all in English, and she had recorded the events of the last few weeks cautiously and cryptically. Not a soul in the marabout's house could read English, except the marabout himself; and it was seldom he honoured her with a visit. Nevertheless, it had become a habit to lock up the books, and she found a secretive pleasure in it.

She had only time to slip the ribbon back into her breast, and sit down stiffly on the divan, when the door was opened again by Noura.

"O Lella Saida, I have brought the Roumia," the negress announced.

A slim figure in Arab dress came into the room, unfastening a white veil with fingers that trembled with impatience. The door shut softly. Noura had obeyed instructions.



XXXVI

For ten years Victoria had been waiting for this moment, dreaming of it at night, picturing it by day. Now it had come.

There was Saidee standing before her, found at last. Saidee, well and safe, and lovely as ever, hardly changed in feature, and yet—there was something strange about her, something which stopped the joyous beating of the girl's heart. It was almost as if she had died and come to Heaven, to find that Heaven was not Heaven at all, but a cold place of fear.

She was shocked at the impression, blaming herself. Surely Saidee did not know her yet, that was all; or the surprise was too great. She wished she had sent word by the negress. Though that would have seemed banal, it would have been better than to see the blank look on Saidee's face, a look which froze her into a marble statue. But it was too late now. The only thing left was to make the best of a bad beginning.

"Oh, darling!" Victoria cried. "Have I frightened you? Dearest—my beautiful one, it's your little sister. All these years I've been waiting—waiting to find a way. You knew I would come some day, didn't you?"

Tears poured down her face. She tried to believe they were tears of joy, such as she had often thought to shed at sight of Saidee. She had been sure that she could not keep them back, and that she would not try. They should have been sweet as summer rain, but they burned her eyes and her cheeks as they fell. Saidee was silent. The girl held out her arms, running a step or two, then, faltering, she let her arms fall. They felt heavy and stiff, as if they had been turned to wood. Saidee did not move. There was an expression of dismay, even of fear on her face.

"You don't know me!" Victoria said chokingly. "I've grown up, and I must seem like a different person—but I'm just the same, truly. I've loved you so, always. You'll get used to seeing me changed. You—you don't think I'm somebody else pretending to be Victoria, do you? I can tell you all the things we used to do and say. I haven't forgotten one. Oh, Saidee, dearest, I've come such a long way to find you. Do be glad to see me—do!"

Her voice broke. She put out her hands pleadingly—the childish hands that had seemed pathetically pretty to Stephen Knight.

A look of intense concentration darkened Saidee's eyes. She appeared to question herself, to ask her intelligence what was best to do. Then the tense lines of her face softened. She forced herself to smile, and leaning towards Victoria, clasped the slim white figure in her arms, holding it tightly, in silence. But over the girl's shoulder, her eyes still seemed to search an answer to their question.

When she had had time to control her voice and expression, she spoke, releasing her sister, taking the wistful face between her hands, and gazing at it earnestly. Then she kissed lips and cheeks.

"Victoria!" she murmured. "Victoria! I'm not dreaming you?"

"No, no, darling," the girl answered, more hopefully. "No wonder you're dazed. This—finding you, I mean—has been the object of my life, ever since your letters stopped coming, and I began to feel I'd lost you. That's why I can't realize your being struck dumb with the surprise of it. Somehow, I've always felt you'd be expecting me. Weren't you? Didn't you know I'd come when I could?"

Saidee shook her head, looking with extraordinary, almost feverish, interest at the younger girl, taking in every detail of feature and complexion, all the exquisite outlines of extreme youth, which she had lost.

"No," she said slowly. "I thought I was dead to the world. I didn't think it would be possible for anyone to find me, even you."

"But—you are glad—now I'm here?" Victoria faltered.

"Of course," Saidee answered unhesitatingly. "I'm delighted—enchanted—for my own sake. If I'm frightened, if you think me strange—farouche—it's because I'm so surprised, and because—can you believe it?—this is the first time I've spoken English with any human being for nine years—perhaps more. I almost forget—it seems a century. I talk to myself—so as not to forget. And every night I write down what has happened, or rather what I've thought, because things hardly ever do happen here. The words don't come easily. They sound so odd in my own ears. And then—there's another reason why I'm afraid. It's on your account. I'd better tell you. It wouldn't be fair not to tell. I—how are you going to get away again?"

She almost whispered the last words, and spoke them as if she were ashamed. But she watched the girl's face anxiously.

Victoria slipped a protecting arm round her waist. "We are going away together, dearest," she said. "Unless you're too happy and contented. But, my Saidee—you don't look contented."

Saidee flushed faintly. "You mean—I look old—haggard?"

"No—no!" the girl protested. "Not that. You've hardly changed at all, except—oh, I hardly know how to put it in words. It's your expression. You look sad—tired of the things around you."

"I am tired of the things around me," Saidee said. "Often I've felt like a dead body in a grave with no hope of even a resurrection. What were those lines of Christina Rossetti's I used to say over to myself at first, while it still seemed worth while to revolt? Some one was buried, had been buried for years, yet could think and feel, and cry out against the doom of lying 'under this marble stone, forgotten, alone.' Doesn't it sound agonizing—desperate? It just suited me. But now—now——"

"Are things better? Are you happier?" Victoria clasped her sister passionately.

"No. Only I'm past caring so much. If you've come here, Babe, to take me away, it's no use. I may as well tell you now. This is prison. And you must escape, yourself, before the gaoler comes back, or it will be a life-sentence for you, too."

It warmed Victoria's heart that her sister should call her "Babe"—the old pet name which brought the past back so vividly, that her eyes filled again with tears.

"You shall not be kept in prison!" she exclaimed. "It's monstrous—horrible! I was afraid it would be like this. That's why I had to wait and make plenty of money. Dearest, I'm rich. Everything's for you. You taught me to dance, and it's by dancing I've earned such a lot—almost a fortune. So you see, it's yours. I've got enough to bribe Cassim to let you go, if he likes money, and isn't kind to you. Because, if he isn't kind, it must be a sign he doesn't love you, really."

Saidee laughed, a very bitter laugh. "He does like money. And he doesn't like me at all—any more."

"Then—" Victoria's face brightened—"then he will take the ten thousand dollars I've brought, and he'll let you go away with me."

"Ten thousand dollars!" Saidee laughed again. "Do you know who Cassim—as you call him—is?"

The girl looked puzzled. "Who he is?"

"I see you don't know. The secret's been kept from you, somehow, by his friend who brought you here. You'll tell me how you came; but first I'll answer your question. The Cassim ben Halim you knew, has been dead for eight years."

"They told me so in Algiers. But—do you mean—have you married again?"

"I said the Cassim ben Halim you knew, is dead. The Cassim I knew, and know now, is alive—and one of the most important men in Africa, though we live like this, buried among the desert dunes, out of the world—or what you'd think the world."

"My world is where you are," Victoria said.

"Dear little Babe! Mine is a terrible world. You must get out of it as soon as you can, or you'll never get out at all."

"Never till I take you with me."

"Don't say that! I must send you away. I must—no matter how hard it may be to part from you," Saidee insisted. "You don't know what you're talking about. How should you? I suppose you must have heard something. You must anyhow suspect there's a secret?"

"Yes, Si Maieddine told me that. He said, when I talked of my sister, and how I was trying to find her, that he'd once known Cassim. I had to agree not to ask questions,—and he would never say for certain whether Cassim was dead or not, but he promised sacredly to bring me to the place where my sister lived. His cousin Lella M'Barka Bent Djellab was with us,—very ill and suffering, but brave. We started from Algiers, and he made a mystery even of the way we came, though I found out the names of some places we passed, like El Aghouat and Ghardaia——"

Saidee's eyes widened with a sudden flash. "What, you came here by El Aghouat and Ghardaia?"

"Yes. Isn't that the best way?"

"The best, if the longest is the best. I don't know much about North Africa geographically. They've taken care I shouldn't know! But I—I've lately found out from—a person who's made the journey, that one can get here from Algiers in a week or eight days. Seventeen hours by train to Biskra: Biskra to Touggourt two long days in a diligence, or carriage with plenty of horses; Touggourt to Oued Tolga on camel or horse, or mule, in three or four days going up and down among the great dunes. You must have been weeks travelling."

"We have. I——"

"How very queer! What could Si Maieddine's reason have been? Rich Arabs love going by train whenever they can. Men who come from far off to see the marabout always do as much of the journey as possible by rail. I hear things about all important pilgrims. Then why did Si Maieddine bring you by El Aghouat and Ghardaia—especially when his cousin's an invalid? It couldn't have been just because he didn't want you to be seen, because, as you're dressed like an Arab girl no one could guess he was travelling with a European."

"His father lives near El Aghouat," Victoria reminded her sister. And Maieddine had used this fact as one excuse, when he admitted that they might have taken a shorter road. But in her heart the girl had guessed why the longest way had been chosen. She did not wish to hide from Saidee things which concerned herself, yet Maieddine's love was his secret, not hers, therefore she had not meant to tell of it, and she was angry with herself for blushing. She blushed more and more deeply, and Saidee understood.

"I see! He's in love with you. That's why he brought you here. How clever of him! How like an Arab!"

For a moment Saidee was silent, thinking intently. It could not be possible, Victoria told herself, that the idea pleased her sister. Yet for an instant the white face lighted up, as if Saidee were relieved of heavy anxiety.

She drew Victoria closer, with an arm round her waist. "Tell me about it," she said. "How you met him, and everything."

The girl knew she would have to tell, since her sister had guessed, but there were many other things which it seemed more important to say and hear first. She longed to hear all, all about Saidee's existence, ever since the letters had stopped; why they had stopped; and whether the reason had anything to do with the mystery about Cassim. Saidee seemed willing to wait, apparently, for details of Victoria's life, since she wanted to begin with the time only a few weeks ago, when Maieddine had come into it. But the girl would not believe that this meant indifference. They must begin somewhere. Why should not Saidee be curious to hear the end part first, and go back gradually? Saidee's silence had been a torturing mystery for years, whereas about her, her simple past, there was no mystery to clear up.

"Yes," she agreed. "But you promised to tell me about yourself and—and——"

"I know. Oh, you shall hear the whole story. It will seem like a romance to you, I suppose, because you haven't had to live it, day by day, year by year. It's sordid reality to me—oh, how sordid!—most of it. But this about Maieddine changes everything. I must hear what's happened—quickly—because I shall have to make a plan. It's very important—dreadfully important. I'll explain, when you've told me more. But there's time to order something for you to eat and drink, first, if you're tired and hungry. You must be both, poor child—poor, pretty child! You are pretty—lovely. No wonder Maieddine—but what will you have. Which among our horrid Eastern foods do you hate least?"

"I don't hate any of them. But don't make me eat or drink now, please, dearest. I couldn't. By and by. We rested and lunched this side of the city. I don't feel as if I should ever be hungry again. I'm so——" Victoria stopped. She could not say: "I am so happy," though she ought to have been able to say that. What was she, then, if not happy? "I'm so excited," she finished.

Saidee stroked the girl's hand, softly. On hers she wore no ring, not even a wedding ring, though Cassim had put one on her finger, European fashion, when she was a bride. Victoria remembered it very well, among the other rings he had given during the short engagement. Now all were gone. But on the third finger of the left hand was the unmistakable mark a ring leaves if worn for many years. The thought passed through Victoria's mind that it could not be long since Saidee had ceased to wear her wedding ring.

"I don't want to be cruel, or frighten you, my poor Babe," she said, "but—you've walked into a trap in coming here, and I've got to try and save you. Thank heaven my husband's away, but we've no time to lose. Tell me quickly about Maieddine. I've heard a good deal of him, from Cassim, in old days; but tell me all that concerns him and you. Don't skip anything, or I can't judge."

Saidee's manner was feverishly emphatic, but she did not look at Victoria. She watched her own hand moving back and forth, restlessly, from the girl's finger-tips, up the slender, bare wrist, and down again.

Victoria told how she had seen Maieddine on the boat, coming to Algiers; how he had appeared later at the hotel, and offered to help her, hinting, rather than saying, that he had been a friend of Cassim's, and knew where to find Cassim's wife. Then she went on to the story of the journey through the desert, praising Maieddine, and hesitating only when she came to the evening of his confession and threat. But Saidee questioned her, and she answered.

"It came out all right, you see," she finished at last. "I knew it must, even in those few minutes when I couldn't help feeling a little afraid, because I seemed to be in his power. But of course I wasn't really. God's power was over his, and he felt it. Things always do come out right, if you just know they will."

Saidee shivered a little, though her hand on Victoria's was hot. "I wish I could think like that," she half whispered. "If I could, I——"

"What, dearest?"

"I should be brave, that's all. I've lost my spirit—lost faith, too—as I've lost everything else. I used to be quite a good sort of girl; but what can you expect after ten years shut up in a Mussulman harem? It's something in my favour that they never succeeded in 'converting' me, as they almost always do with a European woman when they've shut her up—just by tiring her out. But they only made me sullen and stupid. I don't believe in anything now. You talk about 'God's power.' He's never helped me. I should think 'things came right' more because Maieddine felt you couldn't get away from him, then and later, and because he didn't want to offend the marabout, than because God troubled to interfere. Besides, things haven't come right. If it weren't for Maieddine, I might smuggle you away somehow, before the marabout arrives. But now, Maieddine will be watching us like a lynx—or like an Arab. It's the same thing where women are concerned."

"Why should the marabout care what I do?" asked Victoria. "He's nothing to us, is he?—except that I suppose Cassim must have some high position in his Zaouia."

"A high position! I forgot, you couldn't know—since Maieddine hid everything from you. An Arab man never trusts a woman to keep a secret, no matter how much in love he may be. He was evidently afraid you'd tell some one the great secret on the way. But now you're here, he won't care what you find out, because he knows perfectly well that you can never get away."

Victoria started, and turned fully round to stare at her sister with wide, bright eyes. "I can and I will get away!" she exclaimed. "With you. Never without you, of course. That's why I came, as I said. To take you away if you are unhappy. Not all the marabouts in Islam can keep you, dearest, because they have no right over you—and this is the twentieth century, not hundreds of years ago, in the dark ages."

"Hundreds of years in the future, it will still be the dark ages in Islam. And this marabout thinks he has a right over me."

"But if you know he hasn't?"

"I'm beginning to know it—beginning to feel it, anyhow. To feel that legally and morally I'm free. But law and morals can't break down walls."

"I believe they can. And if Cassim——"

"My poor child, when Cassim ben Halim died—at a very convenient time for himself—Sidi El Hadj Mohammed ben Abd-el-Kadr appeared to claim this maraboutship, left vacant by the third marabout in the line, an old, old man whose death happened a few weeks before Cassim's. This present marabout was his next of kin—or so everybody believes. And that's the way saintships pass on in Islam, just as titles and estates do in other countries. Now do you begin to understand the mystery?"

"Not quite. I——"

"You heard in Algiers that Cassim had died in Constantinople?"

"Yes. The Governor himself said so."

"The Governor believes so. Every one believes—except a wretched hump-backed idiot in Morocco, who sold his inheritance to save himself trouble, because he didn't want to leave his home, or bother to be a marabout. Perhaps he's dead by this time, in one way or another. I shouldn't be surprised. If he is, Maieddine and Maieddine's father, and a few other powerful friends of Cassim's, are the only ones left who know the truth, even a part of it. And the great Sidi El Hadj Mohammed himself."

"Oh, Saidee—Cassim is the marabout!"

"Sh! Now you know the secret that's kept me a prisoner in his house long, long after he'd tired of me, and would have got rid of me if he'd dared—and if he hadn't been afraid in his cruel, jealous way, that I might find a little happiness in my own country. And worse still, it's the secret that will keep you a prisoner, too, unless you make up your mind to do the one thing which can possibly help you."

"What thing?" Victoria could not believe that the answer which darted into her mind was the one Saidee really meant to give.

Saidee's lips opened, but with the girl's eyes gazing straight into hers, it was harder to speak than she had thought. Out of them looked a highly sensitive yet brave spirit, so true, so loving and loyal, that disloyalty to it was a crime—even though another love demanded it.

"I—I hate to tell you," she stammered. "Only, what can I do? If Maieddine hadn't loved you—but if he hadn't, you wouldn't be here. And being here, we—we must just face the facts. The man who calls himself my husband—I can't think of him as being that any more—is like a king in this country. He has even more power than most kings have nowadays. He'll give you to Maieddine when he comes home, if Maieddine asks him, as of course he will. Maieddine wouldn't have given you up, there in the desert, if he hadn't been sure he could bribe the marabout to do exactly what he wanted."

"But why can't I bribe him?" Victoria persisted, hopefully. "If he's truly tired of you, my money——"

"He'd laugh at you for offering it, and say you might keep it for a dot. He's too rich to be tempted with money, unless it was far more than you or I have ever seen. From his oasis alone he has an income of thousands and thousands of dollars; and presents—large ones and small ones—come to him from all over North Africa—from France, even. All the Faithful in the desert, for hundreds of miles around, give him their first and best dates of the year, their first-born camels, their first foals, and lambs, and mules, in return for his blessing on their palms and flocks. He has wonderful rugs, and gold plate, and jewels, more than he knows what to do with, though he's very charitable. He's obliged to be, to keep up his reputation and the reputation of the Zaouia. Everything depends on that—all his ambitions, which he thinks I hardly know. But I do know. And that's why I know that Maieddine will be able to bribe him. Not with money: with something Cassim wants and values far more than money. You wouldn't understand what I mean unless I explained a good many things, and it's hardly the time for explaining more now. You must just take what I say for granted, until I can tell you everything by and by. But there are enormous interests mixed up with the marabout's ambitions—things which concern all Africa. Is it likely he'll let you and me go free to tell secrets that would ruin him and his hopes for ever?"

"We wouldn't tell."

"Didn't I say that an Arab never trusts a woman? He'd kill us sooner than let us go. And you've learned nothing about Arab men if you think Maieddine will give you up and see you walk out of his life after all the trouble he's taken to get you tangled up in it. That's why we've got to look facts in the face. You meant to help me, dear, but you can't. You can only make me miserable, because you've spoiled your happiness for my sake. Poor little Babe, you've wandered far, far out of the zone of happiness, and you can never get back. All you can do is to make the best of a bad bargain."

"I asked you to explain that, but you haven't yet."

"You must—promise Maieddine what he asks, before Cassim comes back from South Oran."

This was the thing Victoria had feared, but could not believe Saidee would propose. She shrank a little, and Saidee saw it. "Don't misunderstand," the elder woman pleaded in the soft voice which pronounced English almost like a foreign language. "I tell you, we can't choose what we want to do, you and I. If you wait for Cassim to be here, it will come to the same thing, but it will be fifty times worse, because then you'll have the humiliation of being forced to do what you might seem to do now of your own free will."

"I can't be forced to marry Maieddine. Nothing could make me do it. He knows that already, unless——"

"Unless what? Why do you look horrified?"

"There's one thing I forgot to tell you about our talk in the desert. I promised him I would say 'yes' in case something happened—something I thought then couldn't happen."

"But you find now it could?"

"Oh, no—no, I don't believe it could."

"You'd better tell me what it is."

"That you—I said, I would promise to marry him if you wished it. He asked me to promise that, and I did, at once."

A slow colour crept over Saidee's face, up to her forehead. "You trusted me," she murmured.

"And I do now—with all my heart. Only you've lived here, out of the world, alone and sad for so long, that you're afraid of things I'm not afraid of."

"I'm afraid because I know what cause there is for fear. But you're right. My life has made me a coward. I can't help it."

"Yes, you can—I've come to help you help it."

"How little you understand! They'll use you against me, me against you. If you knew I were being tortured, and you could save me by marrying Maieddine, what would you do?"

Victoria's hand trembled in her sister's, which closed on it nervously. "I would marry him that very minute, of course. But such things don't happen."

"They do. That's exactly what will happen, unless you tell Maieddine you've made up your mind to say 'yes'. You can explain that it's by my advice. He'll understand. But he'll respect you, and won't be furious at your resistance, and want to revenge himself on you in future, as he will if you wait to be forced into consenting."

Victoria sprang up and walked away, covering her face with her hands. Her sister watched her as if fascinated, and felt sick as she saw how the girl shuddered. It was like watching a trapped bird bleeding to death. But she too was in the trap, she reminded herself. Really, there was no way out, except through Maieddine. She said this over and over in her mind. There was no other way out. It was not that she was cruel or selfish. She was thinking of her sister's good. There was no doubt of that, she told herself: no doubt whatever.



XXXVII

Victoria felt as if all her blood were beating in her brain. She could not think, and dimly she was glad that Saidee did not speak again. She could not have borne more of those hatefully specious arguments.

For a moment she stood still, pressing her hands over her eyes, and against her temples. Then, without turning, she walked almost blindly to a window that opened upon Saidee's garden. The little court was a silver cube of moonlight, so bright that everything white looked alive with a strange, spiritual intelligence. The scent of the orange blossoms was lusciously sweet. She shrank back, remembering the orange-court at the Caid's house in Ouargla. It was there that Zorah had prophesied: "Never wilt thou come this way again."

"I'm tired, after all," the girl said dully, turning to Saidee, but leaning against the window frame. "I didn't realize it before. The perfume—won't let me think."

"You look dreadfully white!" exclaimed Saidee. "Are you going to faint? Lie down here on this divan. I'll send for something."

"No, no. Don't send. And I won't faint. But I want to think. Can I go out into the air—not where the orange blossoms are?"

"I'll take you on to the roof," Saidee said. "It's my favourite place—looking over the desert."

She put her arm round Victoria, leading her to the stairway, and so to the roof.

"Are you better?" she asked, miserably. "What can I do for you?"

"Let's not speak for a little while, please. I can think now. Soon I shall be well. Don't be anxious about me, darling."

Very gently she slipped away from Saidee's arm that clasped her waist; and the softness of the young voice, which had been sharp with pain, touched the elder woman. She knew that the girl was thinking more of her, Saidee, than of herself.

Victoria leaned on the white parapet, and looked down over the desert, where the sand rippled in silvery lines and waves, like water in moonlight.

"The golden silence!" she thought.

It was silver now, not golden; but she knew that this was the place of her dream. On a white roof like this, she had seen Saidee stand with eyes shaded from the sun in the west; waiting for her, calling for her, or so she had believed. Poor Saidee! Poor, beautiful Saidee; changed in soul, though so little changed in face! Could it be that she had never called in spirit to her sister?

Victoria bowed her head, and tears fell from her eyes upon her cold bare arms, crossed on the white wall.

Saidee did not want her. Saidee was sorry that she had come. Her coming had only made things worse.

"I wish—" the girl was on the point of saying to herself—"I wish I'd never been born." But before the words shaped themselves fully in her mind—terrible words, because she had felt the beauty and sacred meaning of life—the desert spoke to her.

"Saidee does want you," the spirit of the wind and the glimmering sands seemed to say. "If she had not wanted you, do you think you would have been shown this picture, with your sister in it, the picture which brought you half across the world? She called once, long ago, and you heard the call. You were allowed to hear it. Are you so weak as to believe, just because you're hurt and suffering, that such messages between hearts mean nothing? Saidee may not know that she wants you, but she does, and needs you more than ever before. This is your hour of temptation. You thought everything was going to be wonderfully easy, almost too easy, and instead, it is difficult, that's all. But be brave for Saidee and yourself, now and in days to come, for you are here only just in time."

The pure, strong wind blowing over the dunes was a tonic to Victoria's soul, and she breathed it eagerly. Catching at the robe of faith, she held the spirit fast, and it stayed with her.

Suddenly she felt at peace, sure as a child that she would be taught what to do next. There was her star, floating in the blue lake of the sky, like a water lily, where millions of lesser lilies blossomed.

"Dear star," she whispered, "thank you for coming. I needed you just then."

"Are you better?" asked Saidee in a choked voice.

Victoria turned away from sky and desert to the drooping figure of the woman, standing in a pool of shadow, dark as fear and treachery.

"Yes, dearest one, I am well again, and I won't have to worry you any more." The girl gently wound two protecting arms round her sister.

"What have you decided to do?"

Victoria could feel Saidee's heart beating against her own.

"I've decided to pray about deciding, and then to decide. Whatever's best for you, I will do, I promise."

"And for yourself. Don't forget that I'm thinking of you. Don't believe it's all cowardice."

"I don't believe anything but good of my Saidee."

"I envy you, because you think you've got Someone to pray to. I've nothing. I'm—alone in the dark."

Victoria made her look up at the moon which flooded the night with a sea of radiance. "There is no dark," she said. "We're together—in the light."

"How hopeful you are!" Saidee murmured. "I've left hope so far behind, I've almost forgotten what it's like."

"Maybe it's always been hovering just over your shoulder, only you forgot to turn and see. It can't be gone, because I feel sure that truth and knowledge and hope are all one."

"I wonder if you'll still feel so when you've married a man of another race—as I have?"

Victoria did not answer. She had to conquer the little cold thrill of superstitious fear which crept through her veins, as Saidee's words reminded her of M'Barka's sand-divining. She had to find courage again from "her star," before she could speak.

"Forgive me, Babe!" said Saidee, stricken by the look in the lifted eyes. "I wish I needn't remind you of anything horrid to-night—your first night with me after all these years. But we have so little time. What else can I do?"

"I shall know by to-morrow what we are to do," Victoria said cheerfully. "Because I shall take counsel of the night."

"You're a very odd girl," the woman reflected aloud. "When you were a tiny thing, you used to have the weirdest thoughts, and do the quaintest things. I was sure you'd grow up to be absolutely different from any other human being. And so you have, I think. Only an extraordinary sort of girl could ever have made her way without help from Potterston, Indiana, to Oued Tolga in North Africa."

"I had help—every minute. Saidee—did you think of me sometimes, when you were standing here on this roof?"

"Yes, of course I thought of you often—only not so often lately as at first, because for a long time now I've been numb. I haven't thought much or cared much about anything, or—or any one except——"

"Except——"

"Except—except myself, I'm afraid." Saidee's face was turned away from Victoria's. She looked toward Oued Tolga, the city, whither the carrier-pigeon had flown.

"I wondered," she went on hastily, "what had become of you, and if you were happy, and whether by this time you'd nearly forgotten me. You were such a baby child when I left you!"

"I won't believe you really wondered if I could forget. You, and thoughts of you, have made my whole life. I was just living for the time when I could earn money enough to search for you—and preparing for it, of course, so as to be ready when it came."

Saidee still looked toward Oued Tolga, where the white domes shimmered, far away in the moonlight, like a mirage. Was love a mirage, too?—the love that called for her over there, the love whose voice made the strings of her heart vibrate, though she had thought them broken and silent for ever. Victoria's arms round her felt strong and warm, yet they were a barrier. She was afraid of the barrier, and afraid of the girl's passionate loyalty. She did not deserve it, she knew, and she would be more at ease—she could not say happier, because there was no such word as happiness for her—without it. Somehow she could not bear to talk of Victoria's struggle to come to her rescue. The thought of all the girl had done made her feel unable to live up to it, or be grateful. She did not want to be called upon to live up to any standard. She wanted—if she wanted anything—simply to go on blindly, as fate led. But she felt that near her fate hovered, like the carrier-pigeon; and some terrible force within herself, which frightened her, seemed ready to push away or destroy anything that might come between her and that fate. She knew that she ought to question Victoria about the past years of their separation, one side of her nature was eager to hear the story. But the other side, which had gained strength lately, forced her to dwell upon less intimate things.

"I suppose Mrs. Ray managed to keep most of poor father's money?" she said.

"Mrs. Ray died when I was fourteen, and after that Mr. Potter lost everything in speculation," the girl answered.

"Everything of yours, too?"

"Yes. But it didn't matter, except for the delay. My dancing—your dancing really, dearest, because if it hadn't been for you I shouldn't have put my heart into it so—earned me all I needed."

"I said you were extraordinary! But how queer it seems to hear those names again. Mrs. Ray. Mr. Potter. They're like names in a dream. How wretched I used to think myself, with Mrs. Ray in Paris, when she was so jealous and cross! But a thousand times since, I've wished myself back in those days. I was happy, really. I was free. Life was all before me."

"Dearest! But surely you weren't miserable from the very first, with—with Cassim?"

"No-o. I suppose I wasn't. I was in love with him. It seemed very interesting to be the wife of such a man. Even when I found that he meant to make me lead the life of an Arab woman, shut up and veiled, I liked him too well to mind much. He put it in such a romantic way, telling me how he worshipped me, how mad with jealousy he was even to think of other men seeing my face, and falling in love with it. He thought every one must fall in love! All girls like men to be jealous—till they find out how sordid jealousy can be. And I was so young—a child. I felt as if I were living in a wonderful Eastern poem. Cassim used to give me the most gorgeous presents, and our house in Algiers was beautiful. My garden was a dream—and how he made love to me in it! Besides, I was allowed to go out, veiled. It was rather fun being veiled—in those days, I thought so. It made me feel mysterious, as if life were a masquerade ball. And the Arab women Cassim let me know—a very few, wives and sisters of his friends—envied me immensely. I loved that—I was so silly. And they flattered me, asking about my life in Europe. I was like a fairy princess among them, until—one day—a woman told me a thing about Cassim. She told me because she was spiteful and wanted to make me miserable, of course, for I found out afterwards she'd been expressly forbidden to speak, on account of my 'prejudices'—they'd all been forbidden. I wouldn't believe at first,—but it was true—the others couldn't deny it. And to prove what she said, the woman took me to see the boy, who was with his grandmother—an aunt of Maieddine's, dead now."

"The boy?"

"Oh, I forgot. I haven't explained. The thing she told was, that Cassim had a wife living when he married me."

"Saidee!—how horrible! How horrible!"

"Yes, it was horrible. It broke my heart." Saidee was tingling with excitement now. Her stiff, miserable restraint was gone in the feverish satisfaction of speaking out those things which for years had corroded her mind, like verdigris. She had never been able to talk to anyone in this way, and her only relief had been in putting her thoughts on paper. Some of the books in her locked cupboard she had given to a friend, the writer of to-day's letter, because she had seen him only for a few minutes at a time, and had been able to say very little, on the one occasion when they had spoken a few words to each other. She had wanted him to know what a martyrdom her life had been. Involuntarily she talked to her sister, now, as she would have talked to him, and his face rose clearly before her eyes, more clearly almost than Victoria's, which her own shadow darkened, and screened from the light of the moon as they stood together, clasped in one another's arms.

"Cassim thought it all right, of course," she went on. "A Mussulman may have four wives at a time if he likes—though men of his rank don't, as a rule, take more than one, because they must marry women of high birth, who hate rivals in their own house. But he was too clever to give me a hint of his real opinions in Paris. He knew I wouldn't have looked at him again, if he had—even if he hadn't told me about the wife herself. She had had this boy, and gone out of her mind afterwards, so she wasn't living with Cassim—that was the excuse he made when I taxed him with deceiving me. Her father and mother had taken her back. I don't know surely whether she's living or dead, but I believe she's dead, and her body buried beside the grave supposed to be Cassim's. Anyhow, the boy's living, and he's the one thing on earth Cassim loves better than himself."