om
Bou-Saada, one after the search for the farmhouse; and Nevill thought
himself in luck, for he was not allowed to write often to Josette.

After Michelet the road, a mere shelf projecting along a precipice,
slants upward on its way to the Col de Tirouda, sharp as a knife aimed
at the heart of the mountains. From far below clouds boil up as if the
valleys smoked after a destroying fire, and through flying mists flush
the ruddy earth, turning the white film to pinkish gauze. Crimson and
purple stones shine like uncut jewels, and cascades of yellow gorse,
under red-flowering trees, pour down over low-growing white flowers,
which embroider the rose-coloured rocks.

Then, suddenly, gone is the green Kabyle mountain-world, gone like a
dream the tangle of ridges and chasms, the bright tapestry of fig trees
and silver olives, dark karoubias (the wild locusts of John the Baptist)
and climbing roses. Rough, coarse grass has eaten up the flowers, or
winds sweeping down from the Col have killed them. Only a few stunted
trees bend grotesquely to peer over the sheer sides of shadowed gorges
as the road strains up and up, twisting like a scar left by a whip-lash,
on the naked brown shoulders of a slave. So at last it flings a loop
over the Col de Tirouda. Then, round a corner the wand of an invisible
magician waves: darkness and winter cold become summer warmth and light.

This light was the level golden glory of late afternoon when Stephen saw
it from Nevill's car; and so green were the wide stretching meadows and
shining rivers far below, that he seemed to be looking at them through
an emerald, as Nero used to gaze at his gardens in Rome. Down the motor
plunged towards the light, threading back and forth a network of
zig-zags, until long before sunset they were in the warm lowlands,
racing towards Bordj-bou Arreredj and Msila. Beyond Msila, they would
follow the desert track which would bring them by and by to the oasis
town of Bou-Saada.

If Stephen had been a tourist, guide-book in hand, he would have
delighted in the stony road among the mountains between Bordj-bou
Arreredj and Msila; but it was the future, not the past, which held his
thoughts to-day, and he had no more than a passing glance for ruined
mosques and palaces. It was only after nightfall, far beyond the town of
Msila, far beyond the vast plain of the Hodna, that his first dim
glimpse of the desert thrilled him out of self-absorption.

Even under the stars whi