n to feel interested in this wandering maker of gardens, who
was a pilgrim over the world like Monte Cristo.

"Is he young?" she asked.

"No."

"Married?"

"Oh, no! He is always alone. Sometimes he comes here and stays for three
months, and is never once seen outside the garden. And sometimes for a
year he never comes to Beni-Mora. But he is here now. Twenty Arabs
are always working in the garden, and at night ten Arabs with guns are
always awake, some in a tent inside the door and some among the trees.

"Then there is danger at night?"

"The garden touches the desert, and those who are in the desert without
arms are as birds in the air without wings."

They had come out from among the houses now into a broad, straight road,
bordered on the left by land that was under cultivation, by fruit trees,
and farther away by giant palms, between whose trunks could be seen
the stony reaches of the desert and spurs of grey-blue and faint
rose-coloured mountains. On the right was a shady garden with fountains
and stone benches, and beyond stood a huge white palace built in the
Moorish style, and terraced roofs and a high tower ornamented with green
and peacock-blue tiles. In the distance, among more palms, appeared a
number of low, flat huts of brown earth. The road, as far as the eyes
could see, stretched straight forward through enormous groves of palms,
whose feathery tops swayed gently in the light wind that blew from the
desert. Upon all things rained a flood of blue and gold. A blinding
radiance made all things glad.

"How glorious light is!" Domini exclaimed, as she looked down the road
to the point where its whiteness was lost in the moving ocean of the
trees.

Batouch assented without enthusiasm, having always lived in the light.

"As we return from the garden we will visit the tower," he said,
pointing to the Moorish palace. "It is a hotel, and is not yet open,
but I know the guardian. From the tower Madame will see the whole of
Beni-Mora. Here is the negro village."

They traversed its dusty alleys slowly. On the side where the low
brown dwellings threw shadows some of the inhabitants were dreaming or
chattering, wrapped in garments of gaudy cotton. Little girls in the
fiercest orange colour, with tattooed foreheads and leathern amulets,
darted to and fro, chasing each other and shrieking with laughter. Naked
babies, whose shaven heads made a warm resting-place for flies, stared
at Domini with a lustrous va