d with Saidee for a few days,
she saw birds of a different colour among the doves. It was to those
birds, she could not help noticing, that Saidee devoted herself. The
first that appeared, arrived suddenly, while Victoria looked in another
direction. But when the girl saw one alight, she guessed it had come
from a distance. It fluttered down heavily on the roof, as if tired, and
Saidee hid it from Victoria by spreading out her skirt as she scattered
its food.

Then it was easy to understand how Saidee and Captain Sabine had
managed to exchange letters; but she could not bear to let her sister
know by word or even look that she suspected the secret. If Saidee
wished to hide something from her she had a right to hide it. Only--it
was very sad.

For days neither of the sisters spoke of the pigeons, though they came
often, and the girl could not tell what plans might be in the making,
unknown to her. She feared that, if she had not come to Oued Tolga, by
this time Saidee would have gone away, or tried to go away, with Captain
Sabine; and though, since the night of her arrival, when Saidee had
opened her heart, they had been on terms of closest affection, there was
a dreadful doubt in Victoria's mind that the confidences were half
repented. But when the girl had been rather more than a week in the
Zaouia, Saidee spoke out.

"I suppose you've guessed why I come up on the roof at sunset," she
said.

"Yes," Victoria answered.

"I thought so, by your face. Babe, if you'd accused me of anything, or
reproached me, I'd have brazened it out with you. But you've never said
a word, and your eyes--I don't know what they've been like, unless
violets after rain. They made me feel a beast--a thousand times worse
than I would if you'd put on an injured air. Last night I dreamed that
you died of grief, and I buried you under the sand. But I was sorry, and
tore all the sand away with my fingers till I found you again--and you
were alive after all. It seemed like an allegory. I'm going to dig you
up again, you little loving thing!"

"That means you'll give me back your confidence, doesn't it?" Victoria
asked, smiling in a way that would have bewitched a man who loved her.

"Yes; and something else. I'm going to tell you a thing you'll like to
hear. I've written to _him_ about you--our cypher's ready now--and said
that you'd had the most curious effect on me. I'd tried to resist you,
but I couldn't, not even to please him--or myself.