who
had run away from home to her soldier lover, joined Georges DeLisle and
married him. Sanda thought of that, and thought again also that in a few
months more Richard Stanton would come to Touggourt for the getting
together of his caravan. These two thoughts transformed the wild desert
town with its palms, and tombs of murdered sultans, and its frame of
golden dunes into a magical city of romance. She felt that some great
thing ought to happen to her there. It was not enough that Touggourt
should give her a first glimpse of the true Sahara. She wanted it to
give her more. Nor was it enough that she should be met there by an
escort of Bedouins with a chief's nephew at their head, and negro women
to be her servants, and a white camel of purest breed for her to ride,
she being hidden like an Arab princess in a red-curtained bassourah. All
this was wonderful, and thrilling as an Eastern story of the Middle
Ages; but it meant nothing to her heart. And something deep down in her
expected more of Touggourt even than this. She told herself that a place
with such associations owed more to a child of Georges DeLisle and Sanda
De Lisle; and even when she and her cavalcade started away from the
great oasis city, winding southward among the dunes, she still had the
conviction that some day, before very long, Touggourt would pay its
debt.

Ben Raana had done what he could to honour Colonel DeLisle through his
daughter. He had sent a fine caravan to fetch the girl to Djazerta, and
according to the ideas of desert travellers, no luxury was lacking for
her comfort. His half-sister's son, Sidi Tahar Ben Hadj, had under him
some of the best men of the Agha's _goum_, and there were a pair of
giant, ink-black eunuchs to guard the guest and her two negresses.
Silky-soft rugs from Persia lined her bassourah on the side where she
would sit, the balance being kept on the other by her luggage wrapped
in bundles; and the whole was curtained with sumptuous _djerbi_, striped
in rainbow tints. Over the _djerbi_, to protect her from the sun, or
wind and blowing sand, were hung heavy rugs made by the women of the
Djebel Amour mountains, the red and blue folds ornamented by long
strands and woollen tassels of kaleidoscopic colours. Sanda's camel
(like that of Ben Hadj and the one which carried the two negresses) was
a _mehari_, an animal of race, as superior to ordinary beasts of burden
as an eagle is nobler than a domestic fowl. There was a musicia