sure and peace in it; but in every mood the
influence was hard to throw off.

"The desert has taken hold of thee," Maieddine said one day, when he had
watched her in silence for a while, and seen the rapt look in her eyes.
"I knew the time would come, sooner or later. It has come now."

"No," Victoria answered. "I do not belong to the desert."

"If not to-day, then to-morrow," he finished, as if he had not heard.

They were going on towards Ouargla. So much he had told her, though he
had quickly added, "But we shall not stop there." He was waiting still,
though they were out of the black desert and the accursed land of the
renegades. He was not afraid of anything or anyone here, in this
vastness, where a European did not pass once a year, and few Arabs, only
the Spahis, carrying mails from one Bureau Arabe to another, or tired
soldiers changing stations. The beautiful country of the golden dunes,
with its horizon like a stormy sea, was the place of which he said in
his thoughts, "It shall happen there."

On the other side of Ghardaia, even when Victoria had ceased to be
actually impatient for her meeting with Saidee, she had longed to know
the number of days, that she might count them. But now she had drunk so
deep of the colour and the silence that, in spite of herself, she was
passing beyond that phase. What were a few days more, after so many
years? She wondered how she could have longed to go flying across the
desert in Nevill Caird's big motor-car; nevertheless, she never ceased
to wish for Stephen Knight. Her thoughts of him and of the desert were
inextricably and inexplicably mingled, more than ever since the night
when she had danced in the Agha's tent, and Stephen's face had come
before her eyes, as if in answer to her call. Constantly she called him
now. When there was some fleeting, beautiful effect of light or shadow,
she said, "How I wish he were here to see that!" She never named him in
her mind. He was "he": that was name enough. Yet it did not occur to her
that she was "in love" with Knight. She had never had time to think
about falling in love. There had always been Saidee, and dancing; and to
Victoria, the desire to make money enough to start out and find her
sister, had taken the place which ideas of love and marriage fill in
most girls' heads. Therefore she did not know what to make of her
feeling for Stephen. But when a question floated into her brain, she
answered it simply by explaining that h