They rode for hours, sometimes speaking, sometimes silent.  Twice Abdullah passed dates and water to the girl, and always they pressed on.  A camel does not trot, he paces.  He moves the feet of his right side forward at once, and follows them with the feet of his left side.  This motion heaves the rider wofully.  The girl stood it bravely for six hours, then she began to droop.  Abdullah watched her as her head sank toward the camel’s neck; conversation had long ceased.  It had become a trial of endurance.  Abdullah kept his eye upon the girl.  He saw her head bending, bending toward her camel’s neck; he gave the cry of halt, leaped from the dun, while yet at speed, raced to the black, held up his arms and caught his mistress as she fell.

There was naught about them save the two panting camels, the brown sands, the blue sky, and the God of Love.  Abdullah lifted her to the earth as tenderly, as modestly, as though she had been his sister.  It is a fine thing to be a gentleman, and the God of Love is a great God.

It proved that the girl’s faintness came from the camel’s motion and the cruel sun.  Abdullah made the racer and the dun kneel close together.  He spread his burnoose over them and picketed it with his riding-stick.  This made shade.  Then he brought water from the little skin; touched the girl’s lips with it, bathed her brow, sat by her, silent, saw her sleep; knelt in the sand and kissed the little hand that rested on it, and prayed to Him that some call God, and more call Allah.

In an hour the girl whispered, “Abdullah?”

He was at her lips.

“Why are we waiting?” she asked.

“Because I was tired,” he answered.

“Are you rested?” she asked.

“Yes,” he answered.

“Then let us go on,” she said.

They rode on, hope sustaining Abdullah, and love sustaining Nicha, for she knew nothing but love.

Then, after eight hours, on the edge of the desert appeared a little cloud, no larger than a man’s hand.

Abdullah roused himself with effort.  He watched the cloud resolve itself into a mass of green, into waving palms—­then he knew that Zama was before him, and that the march was ended.

He turned and spoke to the girl.  They had not spoken for hours.  “Beloved,” he said, “a half-hour, and we reach rest.”

She did not answer.  She was asleep upon her saddle.

“Thank Allah,” said Abdullah, and they rode on.

Suddenly the trees of the oasis were blotted out.  A yellow cloud of dust rolled in between them and the travellers, and Abdullah said to himself, “It is he whom I seek—­it is He who Keeps Goats.”

II

They met.  In the midst of threescore goats whose feet had made the yellow cloud of dust was a man, tall, gaunt, dressed in the garb of the desert, and burned by the sun as black as a Soudanese.