s away; there was a belt of sky between them and the desert
sand. If his legs had been paralysed, they could not have felt heavier
or more useless.

He struggled on, but very soon the desert and the sky became one; the
world in front of him rose suddenly up and stood on end. It was quite
impossible to reach Abdul--he was receding as the horizon recedes when
a clear atmosphere foreshortens the distance. In his brain there was a
confused jumble; it was full of things which had no meaning or
cohesion. Millicent was the centre of the absurd medley, Millicent,
naked and unashamed, her slender figure as thickly covered with uncut
jewels of huge dimensions as the statues of Diana of Ephesus are
covered with breasts. The jewelled vision of Millicent dominated every
other picture in his brain. It was clearer than the village of flies,
or the African's cell in far-off el-Azhar, or the procession of white
figures returning from the burial of the desert saint. It moved along
in the clear air in front of him. He had no reasoning powers left, or
he would have asked himself why his subconscious brain had fashioned
this vision of Millicent wearing the sacred jewels when he still
believed in her innocence. The clear voice, man's divine messenger,
had kept him assured of the truth of his conviction.

Everything was dreadfully confused. He wished that the horizon would
not come right forward and almost throw him off his balance. He seemed
to be constantly hitting up against it. And Abdul, why was he floating
further and further away? The harder he tried to get to him, the
further he went. And yet he could actually hear him reciting his
prayers. He was telling his rosary. Why did he tantalize him by
coming so near and then floating off again? Sometimes he came so near
that he could see his fine fingers automatically pulling the beads
along the string; a tassel of red silk hung from the end of it. There
were ninety-nine small red beads and one large one. He had reached the
fifty-ninth. Michael could tell that, because the words "O Giver of
Life" came to him sonorously across the desert stillness. The next one
would be "O Giver of Death," but Abdul had floated away again. Now he
had come back; he had said "O Living One," "O Enduring," "O Source of
Discovery."

That was the sixty-third bead. Why had Abdul stopped at that one? Why
did he keep on repeating the words "O Source of Discovery," "O Source
of Discovery"? H