te--with an uncommon sharpness of receptive judgment. He returned
to a life somehow mean and meagre, resuming insignificance with his
dinner jacket. Out with the sand he had been regal; now, like a slave,
he strutted self-conscious and reduced.

But this imperial standard of the Desert stayed a little time beside
him, its purity focussing judgment like a lens. The specks of smaller
emotions left it clear at first, and as his eye wandered vaguely over
the people assembled in the dining-room, it was arrested with a vivid
shock upon two figures at the little table facing him.

He had forgotten Vance, the Birmingham man who sought the North at
midnight with a pocket compass. He now saw him again, with an intuitive
discernment entirely fresh. Before memory brought up her clouding
associations, some brilliance flashed a light upon him. "That man,"
Henriot thought, "might have come with me. He would have understood and
loved it!" But the thought was really this--a moment's reflection spread
it, rather: "He belongs somewhere to the Desert; the Desert brought him
out here." And, again, hidden swiftly behind it like a movement running
below water--"What does he want with it? What is the deeper motive he
conceals? For there is a deeper motive; and it _is_ concealed."

But it was the woman seated next him who absorbed his attention really,
even while this thought flashed and went its way. The empty chair was
occupied at last. Unlike his first encounter with the man, she looked
straight at him. Their eyes met fully. For several seconds there was
steady mutual inspection, while her penetrating stare, intent without
being rude, passed searchingly all over his face. It was disconcerting.
Crumbling his bread, he looked equally hard at her, unable to turn away,
determined not to be the first to shift his gaze. And when at length she
lowered her eyes he felt that many things had happened, as in a long
period of intimate conversation. Her mind had judged him through and
through. Questions and answer flashed. They were no longer strangers.
For the rest of dinner, though he was careful to avoid direct
inspection, he was aware that she felt his presence and was secretly
speaking with him. She asked questions beneath her breath. The answers
rose with the quickened pulses in his blood. Moreover, she explained
Richard Vance. It was this woman's power that shone reflected in the
man. She was the one who knew the big, unusual things. Vance merely