o my heart. Let us
say, if you will, to use a terminology that is otherwise deplorable,
that this is the end while the others are the means."

"Would there be any indiscretion?...."

"None," replied my companion. "Shikh-Salah is only a few days distant.
He whose first steps you have guided with such solicitude in the
desert should have nothing hidden from you."

We had halted in the valley of a little dry well where a few sickly
plants were growing. A spring near by was circled by a crown of gray
verdure. The camels had been unsaddled for the night, and were seeking
vainly, at every stride, to nibble the spiny tufts of _had_. The black
and polished sides of the Tidifest Mountains rose, almost vertically,
above our heads. Already the blue smoke of the fire on which Bou-Djema
was cooking dinner rose through the motionless air.

Not a sound, not a breath. The smoke mounted straight, straight and
slowly up the pale steps of the firmament.

"Have you ever heard of the _Atlas of Christianity_?" asked Morhange.

"I think so. Isn't it a geographical work published by the
Benedictines under the direction of a certain Dom Granger?"

"Your memory is correct," said Morhange. "Even so let me explain a
little more fully some of the things you have not had as much reason
as I to interest yourself in. The _Atlas of Christianity_ proposes to
establish the boundaries of that great tide of Christianity through
all the ages, and for all parts of the globe. An undertaking worthy of
the Benedictine learning, worthy of such a prodigy of erudition as
Dom Granger himself."

"And it is these boundaries that you have come to determine here, no
doubt," I murmured.

"Just so," replied my companion.

He was silent, and I respected his silence, prepared by now to be
astonished at nothing.

"It is not possible to give confidences by halves, without being
ridiculous," he continued after several minutes of meditation,
speaking gravely, in a voice which held no suggestion of that flashing
humor which had a month before enchanted the young officers at Wargla.
"I have begun on mine. I will tell you everything. Trust my
discretion, however, and do not insist upon certain events of my
private life. If, four years ago, at the close of these events, I
resolve to enter a monastery, it does not concern you to know my
reasons. I can marvel at it myself, that the passage in my life of a
being absolutely devoid of interest should have sufficed to chan