now shining brilliantly,
and she saw a station crowded with Arabs in white burnouses, who were
vociferously greeting friends in the train, were offering enormous
oranges for sale to the passengers, or were walking up and down gazing
curiously into the carriages, with the unblinking determination and
indifference to a return of scrutiny which she had already noticed and
thought animal. A guard came up, told her the place was El-Akbara, and
that the train would stay there ten minutes to wait for the train from
Beni-Mora. She decided to get out and stretch her cramped limbs. On
the platform she found Suzanne, looking like a person who had just been
slapped. One side of the maid's face was flushed and covered with a
faint tracery of tiny lines. The other was greyish white. Sleep hung
in her eyes, over which the lids drooped as if they were partially
paralysed. Her fingers were yellow from peeling an orange, and her smart
little hat was cocked on one side. There were grains of sand on her
black gown, and when she saw her mistress she at once began to
compress her lips, and to assume the expression of obstinate patience
characteristic of properly-brought-up servants who find themselves
travelling far from home in outlandish places.

"Have you been asleep, Suzanne?"

"No, Mam'zelle."

"You've had an orange?"

"I couldn't get it down, Mam'zelle."

"Would you like to see if you can get a cup of coffee here?"

"No, thank you, Mam'zelle. I couldn't touch this Arab stuff."

"We shall soon be there now."

Suzanne made all her naturally small features look much smaller, glanced
down at her skirt, and suddenly began to shake the grains of sand from
it in an outraged manner, at the same time extending her left foot. Two
or three young Arabs came up and stood, staring, round her. Their eyes
were magnificent, and gravely observant. Suzanne went on shaking and
patting her skirt, and Domini walked away down the platform, wondering
what a French maid's mind was like. Suzanne's certainly had its
limitations. It was evident that she was horrified by the sight of bare
legs. Why?

As Domini walked along the platform among the fruit-sellers, the guides,
the turbaned porters with their badges, the staring children and the
ragged wanderers who thronged about the train, she thought of the desert
to which she was now so near. It lay, she knew, beyond the terrific
wall of rock that faced her. But she could see no opening. The towering
sum