e. 'That my fate lies in the sand,'
she said--'and yours, and hers.'

"And she pointed at little Marie, who was playing with a yellow kid we
had then just by the door.

"'What's that to be afraid of?' I asked her. 'Haven't we come to the
desert to make our fortune, and isn't there sand in the desert?'

"'Not much by here,' she said.

"And that's true, m'sieu. It's hard ground, you know, at Beni-Mora."

"Yes," I said, offering him another cigar.

He refused it with a quick gesture.

"She never would say another word as to what the sand-diviner had told
her; but she was never the same from that day. She was as uneasy as a
lost bitch, m'sieu; and she made me uneasy too. Sometimes she wouldn't
speak to our little one when the child ran to her, and sometimes she'd
catch her up, and kiss her till the little one's cheek was as red as if
you'd been striking it. And then one day, after dark, she went."

"Went!"

"I'd been ill with fever, and gone to spend the night at the sulphur
baths; you know, m'sieu, Hammam-Salahkin, under the mountains. I came
back just at dawn to open the cafe. When I got off my mule at the door
I heard"--his face twitched convulsively--"the most horrible crying of
a child. It was so horrible that I just stood there, holding on to the
bridle of the mule, and listening, and didn't dare go in. I'd heard
children cry often enough before; but--_mon Dieu!_--never like that. At
last I dropped the bridle, and went in, with my legs shaking under me.
I found the little one alone in the house, and like a mad thing. She'd
been alone all night."

His face set rigidly.

"And her mother knew I should be all night at the Hammam," he said. "Fin
Tireur--yes, it was coming back, and finding my little one left like
that in such a place, made me earn the name."

He fell suddenly into a moody silence. I broke it by saying: "It was the
sand-diviner?"

He looked at me sharply. "I don't know."

"You never found out?"

"At Beni-Mora the women go veiled," he said harshly.

Suddenly I realised the horror of the situation: the deserted husband
living on with his child in the midst of the ordained and close secrecy
of Beni-Mora, where many of the women never set foot out of doors, and
those who do, unless they are the public dancers, are so heavily veiled
that their features cannot be recognised.

"What did you do?" I asked.

"I searched, as far as one can search in an Arab town, and found out
nothing. I wanted