behind the restlessness there was a hint of the terror of which she
had been aware when she was left alone in the _salle-a-manger_. Was it
not that vague terror which, shaking the restlessness, had sent her
to the white house by the triple palm tree, had brought her now to the
desert? she asked herself, while she listened, and the hidden horseman
of whom Batouch had spoken became in her imagination one with the
legendary victims of fate; with the Jew by the cross roads, the mariner
beating ever about the rock-bound shores of the world, the climber in
the witches' Sabbath, the phantom Arab in the sand. Still holding her
revolver, she turned her horse and rode slowly towards the distant
fires, from which came the barking of the dogs. At some hundreds of
yards from them she paused.

"I shall stay here," she said to Batouch. "Where does the moon rise?"

He stretched his arm towards the desert, which sloped gently, almost
imperceptibly, towards the east.

"Ride back a little way towards the oasis. The horseman was behind us.
If he is still following you will meet him. Don't go far. Do as I tell
you, Batouch."

With obvious reluctance he obeyed her. She saw him pull up his horse at
a distance where he had her just in sight. Then she turned so that
she could not see him and looked towards the desert and the east. The
revolver seemed unnaturally heavy in her hand. She glanced at it for a
moment and listened with intensity for the beat of horse's hoofs, and
her wakeful imagination created a sound that was non-existent in her
ears. With it she heard a gallop that was spectral as the gallop of the
black horses which carried Mephistopheles and Faust to the abyss. It
died away almost at once, and she knew it for an imagination. To-night
she was peopling the desert with phantoms. Even the fires of the nomads
were as the fires that flicker in an abode of witches, the shadows that
passed before them were as goblins that had come up out of the sand to
hold revel in the moonlight. Were they, too, waiting for a signal from
the sky?

At the thought of the moon she drew up the reins that had been lying
loosely on her horse's neck and rode some paces forward and away from
the fires, still holding the revolver in her hand. Of what use would
it be against the spectres of the Sahara? The Jew would face it without
fear. Why not the horseman of Batouch? She dropped it into the pocket of
the saddle.

Far away in the east the darkness of th