aken her place in the vision which she no longer
saw."

My companion paused. His pipe had gone out. He did not relight it, but
sat looking at me in silence.

"The Spahi?" I asked.

"Had claimed the giver of the roses."

"And Tahar?"

"The shots he fired after the Spahi missed fire. Yet Tahar was a notable
shot."

"A strange tale," I said. "How did you come to hear it?"

"A year ago I penetrated very far into the Sahara on a sporting
expedition. One day I came upon an encampment of nomads. The story was
told me by one of them as we sat in the low doorway of an earth-coloured
tent and watched the sun go down."

"Told you by an Arab?"

He shook his head.

"By whom, then?"

"By a woman with a clear little bird's voice, with an angel and a devil
in her dark beauty, a woman with the gesture of Paris--the grace, the
_diablerie_ of Paris."

Light broke on me.

"By mademoiselle!" I exclaimed.

"Pardon," he answered; "by madame."

"She was married?"

"To the figure in the mirage; and she was content."

"Content!" I cried.

"Content with her two little dark children dancing before her in the
twilight, content when the figure of the mirage galloped at evening
across the plain, shouting an Eastern love song, with a gazelle--instead
of a woman--slung across his saddle-bow. Did I not say that, as the
desert is the strangest thing in nature, so a woman is the strangest
thing in human nature? Which heart is most mysterious?"

"Its heart?" I said.

"Or the heart of mademoiselle?"

"I give the palm to the latter."

"And I," he answered, taking off his wide-brimmed hat--"I gave it when
I saluted her as madame before the tent door, out there in the great
desert."

End of Project Gutenberg's The Figure In The Mirage, by Robert Hichens

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