turn, so as to grip the back of the seat in
his powerful jaw, he came nigh to being strangled as he lurched and
swung and bumped as the camel got to its knees, which seemed to be
legion as it tucked its legs under and untucked them, and did it all
over again with vociferous lamentations until it had got them all
neatly folded up; and once standing four-square upon the sand, he
wrinkled his nose in disgust and removed himself some yards from the
odour of this unpleasant complaining brute which hailed undoubtedly
from the bazaar, and gave disgusting and crude imitations in its throat
of water being poured out of a small-necked bottle.

He wanted his mistress, and her only, so, having no use for or interest
in this woman who had brought him, for no apparent reason, upon such an
uncomfortable journey, he simply took matters into his own big head and
without a with or by your leave waddled off, book in slobbering mouth,
to look for his beloved, whom--his olfactory powers not being of the
keenest--he felt to be somewhere in the neighbourhood, perhaps playing
at hide-and-seek behind the tents, as she did on wet mornings at home
behind the Chesterfield.

Jill dismounted and stood facing the desert, which seemed to stretch as
one vast purple pall; and as she stood she wrestled with a mighty fear
which held her so that she could not turn and go towards the tent
through which shone the orange light.

She did not say to herself that her son had gone out with his horses
and his dogs; she did not try to trick herself with the thought that
perhaps he slept in his purple tent, and for that reason had not rushed
out hot-foot across the desert to meet and lift her from the camel.

She knew that she had only to turn and walk the few yards to the tent
to have all her questions answered, but she also knew that all she
wanted to do was to stand on and on and on, just as she was, with her
face towards the night, and her back to the dawn of another day, and
definite knowledge.

She loved her other sons deeply and dearly; she loved her little
daughter; but her first-born held equal place in her heart with the
Arab his father, and her love for him was beyond words and almost too
great and too holy a thing to be written about here.

Tears and laughter, the moon and the stars, the mystery of the Sphinx
and the desert at dawn, at noon, at night, bound them both to her heart
with golden chains of a surpassing love.

She had said no word of w