er
my arm."

Victoria tried to think only of M'Barka, and to wait with patience for
the supreme moment--if it were to come. Even if she had wished it, she
could not have asked questions now.

XXIV

It was midnight when Nevill's car ran into the beautiful oasis town,
guarded by the most curious mountains of the Algerian desert, and they
were at their strangest, cut out clear as the painted mountains of stage
scenery, in the light of the great acetylene lamps. Stephen thought them
like a vast, half-burned Moorish city of mosques and palaces, over which
sand-storms had raged for centuries, leaving only traces here and there
of a ruined tower, a domed roof, or an ornamental frieze.

Of the palms he could see nothing, except the long, dark shape of the
oasis among the pale sand-billows; but early next morning he and Nevill
were up and out on the roof of the little French hotel, while sunrise
banners marched across the sky. Stephen had not known that desert dunes
could be bright peach-pink, or that a river flowing over white stones
could look like melted rubies, or that a few laughing Arab girls,
ankle-deep in limpid water, could glitter in morning light like jewelled
houris in celestial gardens. But now that he knew, he would never forget
his first desert picture.

The two men stood on the roof among the bubbly domes for a long time,
looking over the umber-coloured town and the flowing oasis which swept
to Bou-Saada's brown feet like a tidal wave. It was not yet time to go
and ask questions of the Caid, whom Nevill knew.

Stephen was advised not to drink coffee in the hotel before starting on
their quest. "We shall have to swallow at least three cups each of _cafe
maure_ at the Caid's house, and perhaps a dash of tea flavoured with
mint, on top of all, if we don't want to begin by hurting our host's
feelings," Nevill said. So they fasted, and fed their minds by walking
through Bou-Saada in its first morning glory. Already the old part of
the town was alive, for Arabs love the day when it is young, even as
they love a young girl for a bride.

The Englishmen strolled into the cool, dark mosque, where heavy Eastern
scents of musk and benzoin had lain all night like fugitives in
sanctuary, and where the roof was held up by cypress poles instead of
marble pillars, as in the grand mosques of big cities. By the time they
were ready to leave, dawn had become daylight, and coming out of the
brown dusk, the town seeme