and went
unveiled, nor was it impossible for her to talk to the white
people, for her parents were poor and humble, and glad to make
piastres in any way they could. One of her sisters was a
water-carrier at the hotel in Khartoum, and she might be engaged
there also when she was older. But still she held her eyes down,
for she felt embarrassed and oppressed, and, besides, the topee and
the goggles had been replaced, and they spoilt the vision she had
seen first of the English face.

"Well, Merla, if that's your name, will you come with me?" the
Englishman said lightly. He knew the tongue well that her brothers
spoke, not in any of its refinement and subtlety, but in the
ordinary distorted way an Englishman usually speaks a foreign
tongue.

"I will ask if I may," she returned simply, in a low voice, and
drew back into the dark hut behind her. After a moment she
reappeared. "My mother and my brother have ordered it," she said
calmly. "I am ready."

Struck by the philosophic, impassive accent of her voice, and not
feeling at all flattered, the young man added in rather a nettled
tone:

"But I hope it's not disagreeable to you. You are willing to come?"

Then Merla looked at him steadily from under her calm,
widely-arching brows: "I am willing." A calm pride enwrapped all
her countenance, and it seemed as if she said it somewhat as a
victim might say, "I am willing," on being led to the altar of
sacrifice. Yet her eyes were radiant, and seemed to smile on him.

The young Englishman was puzzled, as young England mostly is by the
East, and, seeing this, the girl added, "Certainly I am willing; it
is fated I should go with you. Give me the black box."

But it goes against the grain of an Englishman to let a woman carry
his baggage, though he hires her to do it, and he held his camera
back from her.

"Take these," he said; "they are lighter," and he gave the little
tripod to her, and so they started down the mud sun-baked street
that leads through Omdurman to the desert, and out towards the
battle-ground of Kerreree. There were few people stirring; the men
had already started to their work in the fields by the Nile, or on
the river itself, and the women kept within the close darkness of
the huts mixing and baking meal for the evening's food. Merla
walked on swiftly and silently like a shadow at Stanhope's side
through the mud village, and then on into the silent heat of the
desert beyond. Here the fury of the sun w