* * * * *

"This is the lunchin'-place, my lady."

At last Ibrahim pulled up his donkey, and slid off, drawing his
djelabieh together with his brown hands.

"Ss--ss--ss--ss!"

Hamza hissed, and Mrs. Armine's donkey stopped abruptly. She got down.
She was, or felt as if she was, in the very heart of the mountains, in a
fiery place of beetling yellow, and brownish and reddish yellow,
precipices and heaped up rocks that looked like strangely-shaped flames
solidified by some cruel and mysterious process. The ground felt hot to
her feet as she stood still and looked about her. Her first impression
was one of strong excitement. This empty place excited her as a loud,
fierce, savage noise excites. The look of it was like noise. For a
moment she stood, and though she was really only gazing, she felt as if
she were listening--listening to hardness, to heat, to gleam, that were
crying out to her.

Hamza took down the panniers after laying his wand of sugar-cane upon
the burning ground.

"Why have you brought me here?"

The question was in Mrs. Armine's mind, but she did not speak it. She
put up her hands, lifted her veil, and let the sun fall upon her
"undone" face, but only for an instant. Then she let her veil down
again, and said to Ibrahim:

"You must find me some shade, Ibrahim."

"My lady, you come with me!"

He walked on up the tiny, ascending track, that was like a yellow riband
which had been let down from the sun, and she followed him round a rock
that was thrust out as if to bar the way, and on to a flat ledge over
which the mountain leaned. A long and broad shadow fell here, and the
natural wall behind the ledge was scooped out into a shape that
suggested repose. As she came upon this ledge, and confronted this
shadow, Mrs. Armine uttered a cry of surprise. For against the rock
there lay a pile of heaped-up cushions, and over a part of the ledge was
spread a superb carpet. In this hot and savage and desolate place it so
startled that it almost alarmed her to come abruptly oh these things,
which forcibly suggested luxury and people, and she glanced sharply
round, again lifting her veil. But she saw only gleaming yellow and
amber and red rocks, and shining tresses of sand among them, and
precipices that looked almost like still cascades of fire. And again she
seemed to hear hardness, and heat, and gleam that were crying out to
her.

"This is the lunchin'-place, my lady."

Ibrahim