or dried desert lake, glistening white and livid
blue, full of ghostly reflections, to cross; but once on the other side
all the poetic romance of fairy gardens and magic mirrors vanished. The
vast oasis rose out of earthy sand and cracked mud; and the houses
piled together beyond it were no longer cubes of molten gold, but
squalid, primitive buildings of sun-dried brick crowding each other for
shade and protection, their only beauty in general effect and bizarre
outline.

"Am I to live in one of those mud hovels?" Sanda wondered. She was not
disheartened even by this thought, for the novelty of the whole
experience had keyed her up to enjoy any adventure; still it was a
relief to go swaying past the huddled town, and to stop before a high,
white-washed wall with a small tower on each side of a great gate. Over
the top of the wall Sanda could see the flat roof of a large, low house,
not yellow like the others, but pearly white as the two or three
minarets that gleamed above the fringe of palms.

Somebody must have been watching from one of the squat towers by the
gate--each of which had a loophole-window looking out over the caravan
way--for even before the head man of the cavalcade could reach the shut
portals of faded gray palm-wood, both gates were thrown open, and a
dozen men in white rushed out. They uttered shouts of joy at sight of
Sidi Tahar Ben Hadj, as though he had been absent for months instead of
a few days, and some of the oldest brown faces bent to kiss his
shoulders or elbows.

Sanda saw a bare courtyard paved only with hard-packed, yellow sand; and
the long front of the house with its few small windows looked
unsympathetic and unattractive. The girl felt disappointed. She had
imagined a picturesque house, a sort of "Kubla Khan" palace in the
desert; and she had expected that perhaps Ourieda and her father, the
Agha, would come ceremoniously out through a vast arched doorway to
welcome her. But here there was not even the arched entrance of her
fancy, only two small doors set as far as possible from one another in
the blank facade. Sanda's _mehari_ was led in front of the eastern door,
which was pulled ajar in a secretive way. One of the big negroes helped
her out of the bassourah as usual, when he had forced the white camel to
its knees; and to her surprise the other black man made of his long
white burnous a kind of screen behind which she might pass without being
seen. The women servants--already