of the
most joyous tolerance, and Domini could not help mentally comparing him
with the priest of Beni-Mora. What would Father Roubier think of Father
Beret?

"It is easy to forgive in the sun," Domini said.

The priest laid his hands on his knees, setting his feet well apart. She
noticed that his hands were not scrupulously clean.

"Madame," he said, "it is impossible to be anything but lenient in the
sun. That is my experience. Excuse me but are you a Catholic?"

"Yes."

"So much the better. You must let me show you the chapel. It is in the
building with the cupolas. The congregation consists of five on a full
Sunday." His laugh broke out again. "I hope the day after to-morrow
you and your husband will make it seven. But, as I was saying, the sun
teaches one a lesson of charity. When I first came to live in Africa
in the midst of the sand-rascals--eh; Madame!--I suppose as a priest I
ought to have been shocked by their goings-on. And indeed I tried to
be, I conscientiously did my best. But it was no good. I couldn't be
shocked. The sunshine drove it all out of me. I could only say, 'It
is not for me to question _le bon Dieu_, and _le bon Dieu_ has created
these people and set them here in the sand to behave as they do.' What
is my business? I can't convert them. I can't change their morals. I
must just be a friend to them, cheer them up in their sorrows, give them
a bit if they're starving, doctor them a little. I'm a first-rate hand
at making an Arab take a pill or a powder!--when they are ill, and make
them at home with the white marabout. That's what the sun has taught me,
and every sand-rascal and sand-rascal's child in Amara is a friend of
mine."

He stretched out his legs as if he wished to elongate his satisfaction,
and stared Domini full in the face with eyes that confidently, naively,
asked for her approval of his doctrine of the sun. She could not help
liking him, though she felt more as if she were sitting with a jolly,
big, and rather rowdy boy than with a priest.

"You are fond of the Arabs then?" she said.

"Of course I am, Madame. I can speak their language, and I'm as much
at home in their tents, and more, than I should ever be at the
Vatican--with all respect to the Holy Father."

He got up, went out into the sand, expectorated noisily, then
returned to the tent, wiping his bearded mouth with a large red cotton
pocket-handkerchief.

"Are you staying here long, Madame?"

He sat down agai