ght do to her. But there
was no cry, no sound of any kind, only the cooing of doves which had
flown down into the fountain court, hoping Ourieda might throw them
corn.

The custom of the house was for the three ladies to take their meals
together in a room where occasionally, as a great honour, the Agha dined
with them. That evening a tray of food was brought to Sanda with polite
regrets from Lella Mabrouka because she and her niece were too
indisposed by the hot weather to forsake the shelter of their rooms.
Politeness, always politeness, with these Arabs of high birth and
manners! thought the Irish-French girl in a passionate revolt against
the curtain of silk velvet softly let down between her and the secrets
of Ben Raana's harem. This time it might be, she said to herself, that
politeness covered tragedy. But the same night she received another
message from Mabrouka. It was merely to say that, the air of Djazerta
not being healthful at this time of year, the Agha had decided, for his
daughter's sake, to finish the week of the wedding feast out in the
desert, at the _douar_.

CHAPTER XXI

THE ELEVENTH HOUR

When Max, at the head of his small caravan, came in sight of the Agha's
_douar_, it was almost noon, and the desert, shimmering with heat, was
motionless, as if under enchantment. They had travelled through the
night, after learning that Ben Raana and his family had gone from
Djazerta, with intervals of rest no longer than those allowed to the
Legion on march. What they saw was a giant tent as large as a circus
tent in a village of America or Europe surrounded at a distance by an
army of little tents, black and dirty brown, so flat and low that they
were like huge bats with outstretched wings resting on the sand. The
great tent of the chief with its high roof, its vast spread of white,
red, and amber striped cloth of close-woven camel's hair, rose nobly
above all the others, as a mosque rises above a crowd of prostrate
worshippers at prayer. For background, there was a clump of trees; for
here, in the far southern desert, just outside a waving welter of dunes,
lay a region of _dayas_, where a wilderness of sand and tumbled stones
was brightened by green hollows half full of gurgling water.

Never before had Max seen a _douar_ of importance, the desert dwelling
of a desert chief. But Manoeel had been here before; and the
camel-drivers, if they had not visited this _douar_, were familiar with
others.