a crowd," he answered.

"Our love for peace oughtn't to make us hate our fellowmen!" she said.
"Come, Boris, let us chase away our selfish mood!"

She spoke in a more cheerful voice and drew her rein a little tighter.
Her horse quickened its pace.

"And think how our stay at Amara will make us love the solitudes when we
return to them again. Contrast is the salt of life."

"You speak as if you didn't believe what you are saying."

She laughed.

"If I were ever inclined to tell you a lie," she said, "I should not
dare to. Your mind penetrates mine too deeply."

"You could not tell me a lie."

"Do you hear the dogs barking?" she said, after a moment. "They are
among those tents that are like flies on the sands around the city. That
is the tribe of the Ouled Nails I suppose. Batouch says they camp here.
What multitudes of tents! Those are the suburbs of Amara. I would rather
live in them than in the suburbs of London. Oh, how far away we are, as
if we were at the end of the world!"

Either her last words, or her previous change of manner to a lighter
cheerfulness, almost a briskness, seemed to rouse Androvsky to a greater
confidence, even to anticipation of possible pleasure.

"Yes. After all it is only the desert men who are here. Amara is their
Metropolis, and in it we shall only see their life."

His horse plunged. He had touched it sharply with his heel.

"I believe you hate the thought of civilisation," she exclaimed.

"And you?"

"I never think of it. I feel almost as if I had never known it, and
could never know it."

"Why should you? You love the wilds."

"They make my whole nature leap. Even when I was a child it was so.
I remember once reading _Maud_. In it I came upon a passage--I can't
remember it well, but it was about the red man--"

She thought for a moment, looking towards the city.

"I don't know how it is quite," she murmured. "'When the red man
laughs by his cedar tree, and the red man's babe leaps beyond the
sea'--something like that. But I know that it made my heart beat, and
that I felt as if I had wings and were spreading them to fly away to
the most remote places of the earth. And now I have spread my wings,
and--it's glorious. Come, Boris!"

They put their horses to a canter, and soon drew near to the caravans.
They had sent Batouch and Ali, who generally accompanied them, on with
the rest of the camp. Both had many friends in Amara, and were eager to
be there. It was obvio