ute as she can be--"

Suddenly he swung himself down to the deck below. "The desert's the
place for me to-night," he said. Stepping ashore, he turned to where
the Duchess stood on the deck, gazing out into the night. "Well, give my
love to the girls," he called, waving a hand upwards, as it were to the
wide world, and disappeared into the alluring whiteness.

"I've got to get a key-thought," he muttered to himself, as he walked
swiftly on, till only faint sounds came to him from the riverside. In
the letter he had written to Hylda, which was the turning-point of
all for her, he had spoken of these "key-thoughts." With all the
childishness he showed at times, he had wisely felt his way into spheres
where life had depth and meaning. The desert had justified him to
himself and before the spirits of departed peoples, who wandered over
the sands, until at last they became sand also, and were blown hither
and thither, to make beds for thousands of desert wayfarers, or paths
for camels' feet, or a blinding storm to overwhelm the traveller and
the caravan; Life giving and taking, and absorbing and destroying, and
destroying and absorbing, till the circle of human existence wheel to
the full, and the task of Time be accomplished.

On the gorse-grown common above Hamley, David and Faith, and David's
mother Mercy, had felt the same soul of things stirring--in the green
things of green England, in the arid wastes of the Libyan desert, on the
bosom of the Nile, where Mahommed Hassan now lay in a nugger singing a
song of passion, Nature, with burning voice, murmuring down the unquiet
world its message of the Final Peace through the innumerable years.

GLOSSARY

Aiwa----Yes.
Allah hu Achbar----God is most Great.
Al'mah----Female professional singers, signifying "a learned female."
Ardab----A measure equivalent to five English bushels.

Backsheesh----Tip, douceur.
Balass----Earthen vessel for carrying water.
Bdsha----Pasha.
Bersim----Clover.
Bismillah----In the name of God.
Bowdb----A doorkeeper.

Dahabieh----A Nile houseboat with large lateen sails.
Darabukkeh----A drum made of a skin stretched over an earthenware funnel.
Dourha----Maize.

Effendina----Most noble.
El Azhar----The Arab University at Cairo.

Fedddn----A measure of land representing about an acre.
Fellah----The Egyptian peasant.

Ghiassa----Small boat.

Hakim----Doctor.
Hasheesh----Leaves of hemp.

Insh