mean
that he will "tear the paper" that binds them together, and for eight
francs the kadi will set him free. This means that the children will be
forced from the mother and knocked about by the next wife that comes on
the scene; and the mother-heart will suffer a constant martyrdom from
her husband if only divorce can be averted. The Algerian women may claim
the boys till seven and the girls till ten or twelve; the countrywomen
have no claim after the little life becomes independent of them for
existence.

Look at the awful and fierce sadness of this face: more like a wild
creature than a woman.[D] She has probably been tossed from home to
home until she is left stranded, or wrecked on rocks of unspeakable sin
and shame: for that is how it ends, again and again.

[D] See illustration opposite page 294.

Turn from her: we cannot have her to be the last. Look once more at a
girl, untroubled as yet. If you want to see what the women could be if
but the social yoke of Islam were loosed from their shoulders, study the
little maidens upon whom it has not yet come. Take one of them if you
can get hold of her--even a stupid one, as this one may be with all her
soft grace--let her expand for a few weeks in an atmosphere of love and
purity. Watch the awakening: it is as lovely a thing as you could wish
to see, outside the kingdom of God.

[Illustration: A YOUNG GIRL OF THE ABU SAAD TRIBE]

And if this budding and blossoming can come with the poor watering of
human love, what could it be with the heavenly showers, in their
miracle-power of drawing out all that there is in the earth that they
visit. Oh the capacities that are there! The soil is "only dry."

And in the very fact of its utter dryness lies our claim upon God. "I
will make the shower to come down in his season; there shall be showers
of blessing," is His promise. The "season" for the showers in these
southern lands, is the time of utmost drought. It is not in July when
the gold lingers in the grass, but in September when the tangle of the
spring has sunk to ashen gray, ready to crumble at a touch--it is then
that we know the rains are nearing. God's "season" comes when all has
gone down to despair.

So we look round on our Moslem field, and triumph in the dryness that is
so like death, for it shows that we need not have long to wait.

* * * * *

But a great fight is fought overhead in the natural world out here
before the