r to love the desert, not to feel horror of
its relentlessness.

Now for the first time he had full credit for his cleverness as an
organizer. Never before had they been so remote from civilization. When
travelling in the carriage, stopping each night at the house of some
well-to-do caid or adel, it had been comparatively easy to provide
supplies; but to-day, when jellied chicken and cream-cheese, almond
cakes and oranges appeared at luncheon, and some popular French mineral
water (almost cool because the bottles had been wrapped in wet blanket)
fizzed in the glasses, Victoria said that Si Maieddine must have a tame
djinn for a slave.

"Wait till evening," he told her. "Then perhaps thou mayest see
something to please thee." But he was delighted with her compliments,
and made her drink water from the glass out of which he had drunk, that
she might be sure of his good faith in all he had sworn to her
yesterday. "They who drink water from the same cup have made an eternal
pact together," he said. "I should not dare to be untrue, even if I
would. And thou--I think that thou wilt be true to me."

"Why, certainly I will," answered Victoria, with the pretty American
accent which Stephen Knight had admired and smiled at the night he heard
it first. "Thou art one of my very best friends."

Maieddine looked down into the glass and smiled, as if he were a
crystal-gazer, and could see something under the bright surface, that no
one else could see.

Night folded down over the desert, hot and velvety, like the wings of a
mother-bird covering her children; but before darkness fell, the tents
glimmered under the stars. There were two only, a large one for the
women, and one very small for Maieddine. The Negroes would roll
themselves in their burnouses, and lie beside the animals. But
sleeping-time had not come yet; and it was the Soudanese who prepared
the evening meal.

One of them was a good cook, and for that reason Maieddine had begged
him from the Agha. He made desert bread, by mixing farina with salted
water, and baking it on a flat tin supported by stones over a fire of
dry twigs. When the thin loaf was crisply brown on top, the man took it
off the fire, and covered it up, on the tin, because it was to be eaten
hot.

While Victoria waited for all to be got ready, she strolled a little
away from the tents and the group of resting animals, having promised
Maieddine to avoid the tufts of alfa grass, for fear of vipers whi