on
their mouths were parched and their skins burning. And still on
their left there hung the hounding dots, like prowling jackals.

Anxiously Billy looked at Arlee. This was an ordeal of a ride that
tried the stuff the girl was made of. She was no princess of mystery
now, crossing the moonlit sands; she was no gossamer wraith of a
girl miraculously with him for a time; she was a very hot and human
companion, worried and tired, shutting her dry mouth over any word
of complaint, smiling pluckily at him with dusty lips from the
shrouding hood of her veil. She was completely and thoroughly a
brick.

And Billy's heart ached for her, even while his spirit exulted in
her spirit.

"Beastly hot, isn't it?" he gasped, pulling his insufficient cap
down over his bloodshot eyes.

Valiantly she smiled. "What's a little--heat?" came joltingly back.

"And rough going."

"What's a little--roughness?"

There wasn't any word good enough for her. There wasn't any word
good enough to describe such superhuman courage and sweetness. Billy
had credited all beauties with being spoiled. All he had known had
been distinctly spoiled, even the near-beauties, and the not-so-near
ones, yet here was the most radiantly lovely girl he had ever seen
behaving like an angel of grit.

He didn't quite know what else he expected her to do--have
hysterics, perhaps, or weep, or reproach him for having taken a
wrong way and elected a rash course. He had known that this girl
could be a very minx when piqued. But in the graver crises of life
she proved herself a thoroughbred. She would go till she dropped and
never whimper.

He thought of all she must have been through in that horrible
palace, and he marvelled at the swiftness with which her spirit had
reverted to blitheness again. The disaster, that might have been so
stunning, so irremediable, had passed over her head like lightning
that had not struck.... Even the horror of it had seemed yesterday
to fade in her like the horror of an evil dream. That was what it
had been to her--an evil dream. She was so young, so much of her was
still a child, that the full terror had not touched her.

* * * * *

They had come to a road at last, a road which seemed to be leading
in from the desert very gradually to the hills upon their left, and
it seemed to Billy that it must be a caravan road to Girgeh, and he
felt themselves upon the right track. They must keep their lead, and