Being soundless, and devoid of perfume, the Desert's message reached him
through two senses only--sight and touch; chiefly, of course, the
former. Its invasion was concentrated through the eyes. And vision, thus
uncorrected, went what pace it pleased. The Desert played with him. Sand
stole into his being--through the eyes.

And so obsessing was this majesty of its close presence, that Henriot
sometimes wondered how people dared their little social activities
within its very sight and hearing; how they played golf and tennis upon
reclaimed edges of its face, picnicked so blithely hard upon its
frontiers, and danced at night while this stern, unfathomable Thing lay
breathing just beyond the trumpery walls that kept it out. The challenge
of their shallow admiration seemed presumptuous, almost provocative.
Their pursuit of pleasure suggested insolent indifference. They ran
fool-hardy hazards, he felt; for there was no worship in their vulgar
hearts. With a mental shudder, sometimes he watched the cheap tourist
horde go laughing, chattering past within view of its ancient,
half-closed eyes. It was like defying deity.

For, to his stirred imagination the sublimity of the Desert dwarfed
humanity. These people had been wiser to choose another place for the
flaunting of their tawdry insignificance. Any minute this Wilderness,
"huddled in grey annihilation," might awake and notice them ...!

In his own hotel were several "smart," so-called "Society" people who
emphasised the protest in him to the point of definite contempt.
Overdressed, the latest worldly novel under their arms, they strutted
the narrow pavements of their tiny world, immensely pleased with
themselves. Their vacuous minds expressed themselves in the slang of
their exclusive circle--value being the element excluded. The pettiness
of their outlook hardly distressed him--he was too familiar with it at
home--but their essential vulgarity, their innate ugliness, seemed more
than usually offensive in the grandeur of its present setting. Into the
mighty sands they took the latest London scandal, gabbling it over even
among the Tombs and Temples. And "it was to laugh," the pains they spent
wondering whom they might condescend to know, never dreaming that they
themselves were not worth knowing. Against the background of the noble
Desert their titles seemed the cap and bells of clowns.

And Henriot, knowing some of them personally, could not always escape
their insip