e
was far too indolent to strive to compute--a week, perhaps. She turned
her attention to the parrakeets. One of them was moving, and she noted
with delight that it had perceived her far below and was endeavoring to
draw the attention of its less observant companion to her presence. For
many hours she lay watching it and wondering why, since the one bird
was so singularly intelligent, its companion was equally dull. When she
lowered her eyes and looked out again across the sands, the figure had
approached so close as to be recognizable.

It was that of Mrs. Sin. Rita appreciated the fitness of her presence,
and experienced no surprise, only a mild curiosity. This curiosity was
not concerned with Mrs. Sin herself, but with the nature of the burden
which she bore upon her head.

She was dressed in a manner which Rita dreamily thought would have been
inadequate in England, or even in Cuba, but which was appropriate in the
Great Sahara. How exquisitely she carried herself, mused the dreamer;
no doubt this fine carriage was due in part to her wearing golden shoes
with heels like stilts, and in part to her having been trained to bear
heavy burdens upon her head. Rita remembered that Sir Lucien had once
described to her the elegant deportment of the Arab women, ascribing it
to their custom of carrying water-jars in that way.

The appearance of the speck on the horizon had marked the height of her
trance. Her recognition of Mrs. Sin had signalized the decline of the
chandu influence. Now, the intrusion of a definite, uncontorted memory
was evidence of returning cerebral activity.

Rita had no recollection of the sunset; indeed, she had failed to
perceive any change in the form and position of the shadow cast by the
foliage. It had spread, an ebony patch, equally about the bole of the
tree, so that the sun must have been immediately overhead. But, of
course, she had lain watching the parrakeets for several hours, and now
night had fallen. The desert mounds were touched with silver, the sky
was a nest of diamonds, and the moon cast a shadow of the palm like a
bar of ebony right across the prospect to the rim of the sky dome.

Mrs. Sin stood before her, one half of her lithe body concealed by this
strange black shadow and the other half gleaming in the moonlight so
that she resembled a beautiful ivory statue which some iconoclast had
cut in two.

Placing her burden upon the ground, Mrs. Sin knelt down before Rita
and revere