s they dreamed, too, as a friend.
Had she not haunted the alleys where they worked and idled till they had
learned to expect her, and to miss her when she did not come? And with
those whom Domini knew were assembled their friends, and their friends'
friends, men of Beni-Mora, men from the near oasis, and also many
of those desert wanderers who drift in daily out of the sands to the
centres of buying and selling, barter their goods for the goods of the
South, or sell their loads of dates for money, and, having enjoyed the
dissipation of the cafes and of the dancing-houses, drift away again
into the pathless wastes which are their home.

Few of the French population had ventured out, and the church itself was
almost deserted when the hour for the wedding drew nigh.

The priest came from his little house, bending forward against the wind,
his eyes partially protected from the driving sand by blue spectacles.
His face, which was habitually grave, to-day looked sad and stern,
like the face of a man about to perform a task that was against his
inclination, even perhaps against his conscience. He glanced at the
waiting Arabs and hastened into the church, taking off his spectacles
as he did so, and wiping his eyes, which were red from the action of
the sand-grains, with a silk pocket-handkerchief. When he reached the
sacristy he shut himself into it alone for a moment. He sat down on
a chair and, leaning his arms upon the wooden table that stood in the
centre of the room, bent forward and stared before him at the wall
opposite, listening to the howling of the wind.

Father Roubier had an almost passionate affection for his little church
of Beni-Mora. So long and ardently had he prayed and taught in it, so
often had he passed the twilight hours in it alone wrapped in religious
reveries, or searching his conscience for the shadows of sinful
thoughts, that it had become to him as a friend, and more than a friend.
He thought of it sometimes as his confessor and sometimes as his child.
Its stones were to him as flesh and blood, its altars as lips that
whispered consolation in answer to his prayers. The figures of its
saints were heavenly companions. In its ugliness he perceived only
beauty, in its tawdriness only the graces that are sweet offerings to
God. The love that, had he not been a priest, he might have given to
a woman he poured forth upon his church, and with it that other love
which, had it been the design of his Heavenl