rms on the
table and laid her face against the back of her hand. Her cheek was
burning. She sprang up, went to her dressing-case, unlocked it, drew out
the _boite de beaute_ which Baroudi had given her in the orange-garden,
and quickly made her face up, standing before the glass that was pinned
to the canvas. Then she put on a short fur coat. The wind would be cold
in the sands. She wondered how far they had to go.

And if Nigel should unexpectedly return, as nearly all husbands did on
such occasions?

She could not bother about that. She felt too desperate to care; she
felt in the grasp of fate. If the fate was to be untoward, so much the
worse for her--and for Nigel. She meant to go beyond that ridge of the
sand. That was all she knew. Quickly she buttoned the fur coat and put
on a hat and gloves.

"Now we goin' to start."

Ibrahim put his muffled head in at the door of the tent.

"Walking?" she asked.

"We goin' to start walkin'."

When she came out, she found that the brushwood fire had been pulled to
pieces.

"Down there they not see nothin'," said Ibrahim, pointing towards the
darkness before them.

"And the men? Does it matter about the men?" she asked perfunctorily.
She did not feel that she really cared.

"All the men sleepin', except Hamza. Him watchin'."

The tents of the men were at some distance. She looked, and saw no
movement, no figures except the faint and grotesque silhouettes of the
hobbled camels.

"I say that I follow my Lord Arminigel."

They started into the desert. As they left the camp, Mrs. Armine saw
Hamza behind her tent, patrolling with a matchlock over his shoulder.

The night was dark and starless; the breeze, though slight and wavering
over the sands, was penetrating and cold. The feet of Mrs. Armine sank
down at each step into the deep and yielding sands as she went on into
the blackness of the immeasurable desert. And as she gazed before her at
the hollow blackness and felt the immensity of the unpeopled spaces, it
seemed to her that Ibrahim was leading her into some crazy adventure,
that they were going only towards the winds, the desolate sands, and the
darkness that might be felt. He did not speak to her, nor she to him,
till she heard, apparently near them the angry snarl of a camel. Then
she stopped.

"Did you hear that? There's some one near us," she said.

"My lady come on! That is a very good dromedary for us."

"Ah!" she said.

She hastened forward agai