she walked almost blindly to
a window that opened upon Saidee's garden. The little court was a silver
cube of moonlight, so bright that everything white looked alive with a
strange, spiritual intelligence. The scent of the orange blossoms was
lusciously sweet. She shrank back, remembering the orange-court at the
Caid's house in Ouargla. It was there that Zorah had prophesied: "Never
wilt thou come this way again."

"I'm tired, after all," the girl said dully, turning to Saidee, but
leaning against the window frame. "I didn't realize it before. The
perfume--won't let me think."

"You look dreadfully white!" exclaimed Saidee. "Are you going to faint?
Lie down here on this divan. I'll send for something."

"No, no. Don't send. And I won't faint. But I want to think. Can I go
out into the air--not where the orange blossoms are?"

"I'll take you on to the roof," Saidee said. "It's my favourite
place--looking over the desert."

She put her arm round Victoria, leading her to the stairway, and so to
the roof.

"Are you better?" she asked, miserably. "What can I do for you?"

"Let's not speak for a little while, please. I can think now. Soon I
shall be well. Don't be anxious about me, darling."

Very gently she slipped away from Saidee's arm that clasped her waist;
and the softness of the young voice, which had been sharp with pain,
touched the elder woman. She knew that the girl was thinking more of
her, Saidee, than of herself.

Victoria leaned on the white parapet, and looked down over the desert,
where the sand rippled in silvery lines and waves, like water in
moonlight.

"The golden silence!" she thought.

It was silver now, not golden; but she knew that this was the place of
her dream. On a white roof like this, she had seen Saidee stand with
eyes shaded from the sun in the west; waiting for her, calling for her,
or so she had believed. Poor Saidee! Poor, beautiful Saidee; changed in
soul, though so little changed in face! Could it be that she had never
called in spirit to her sister?

Victoria bowed her head, and tears fell from her eyes upon her cold bare
arms, crossed on the white wall.

Saidee did not want her. Saidee was sorry that she had come. Her coming
had only made things worse.

"I wish--" the girl was on the point of saying to herself--"I wish I'd
never been born." But before the words shaped themselves fully in her
mind--terrible words, because she had felt the beauty and sacred meaning
of