he had said
to him, about Saidee having to live the life of other harem women.

"I bought a string of amber beads at that curiosity-shop yesterday," the
girl went on, "because there's a light in them like what used to be in
Saidee's eyes. Every night, when I've said my prayers and am ready to go
to sleep, I see her in that golden silence I told you about, looking
towards the west--that is, towards me, too, you know; with the sun
setting and streaming right into her eyes, making that jewelled kind of
light gleam in them, which comes and goes in those amber beads. When I
find her, I shall hold up the beads to her eyes in the sunlight and
compare them."

"What is the golden silence like?" asked Stephen. "Do you see more
clearly, now that at last you've come to Africa?"

"I couldn't see more clearly than I did before," the girl answered
slowly, looking away from him, through the green lace of the trees that
veiled the distance. "Yet it's just as mysterious as ever. I can't guess
yet what it can be, unless it's in the desert. I just see Saidee,
standing on a large, flat expanse which looks white. And she's dressed
in white. All round her is a quivering golden haze, wave after wave of
it, endless as the sea when you're on a ship. And there's silence--not
one sound, except the beating which must be my own heart, or the blood
that sings in my ears when I listen for a long time--the kind of singing
you hear in a shell. That's all. And the level sun shining in her eyes,
and on her hair."

"It is a picture," said Stephen.

"Wherever Say was, there would always be a picture," Victoria said with
the unselfish, unashamed pride she had in her sister.

"How I hope Saidee knows I'm near her," she went on, half to herself.
"She'd know that I'd come to her as soon as I could--and she may have
heard things about me that would tell her I was trying to make money
enough for the journey and everything. If I hadn't hoped she _might_ see
the magazines and papers, I could never have let my photograph be
published. I should have hated that, if it hadn't been for the thought
of the portraits coming to her eyes, with my name under them; 'Victoria
Ray, who is dancing in such and such a place.' _She_ would know why I
was doing it; dancing nearer and nearer to her."

"You darling!" Stephen would have liked to say. But only as he might
have spoken caressingly to a lovely child whose sweet soul had won him.
She seemed younger than ever to-day, i