“Well, Merla, if that’s your name, will you come with me?” the Englishman said lightly.  He knew the tongue well that her brothers spoke, not in any of its refinement and subtlety, but in the ordinary distorted way an Englishman usually speaks a foreign tongue.

“I will ask if I may,” she returned simply, in a low voice, and drew back into the dark hut behind her.  After a moment she reappeared.  “My mother and my brother have ordered it,” she said calmly.  “I am ready.”

Struck by the philosophic, impassive accent of her voice, and not feeling at all flattered, the young man added in rather a nettled tone: 

“But I hope it’s not disagreeable to you.  You are willing to come?”

Then Merla looked at him steadily from under her calm, widely-arching brows:  “I am willing.”  A calm pride enwrapped all her countenance, and it seemed as if she said it somewhat as a victim might say, “I am willing,” on being led to the altar of sacrifice.  Yet her eyes were radiant, and seemed to smile on him.

The young Englishman was puzzled, as young England mostly is by the East, and, seeing this, the girl added, “Certainly I am willing; it is fated I should go with you.  Give me the black box.”

But it goes against the grain of an Englishman to let a woman carry his baggage, though he hires her to do it, and he held his camera back from her.

“Take these,” he said; “they are lighter,” and he gave the little tripod to her, and so they started down the mud sun-baked street that leads through Omdurman to the desert, and out towards the battle-ground of Kerreree.  There were few people stirring; the men had already started to their work in the fields by the Nile, or on the river itself, and the women kept within the close darkness of the huts mixing and baking meal for the evening’s food.  Merla walked on swiftly and silently like a shadow at Stanhope’s side through the mud village, and then on into the silent heat of the desert beyond.  Here the fury of the sun was intense.  The river was out of sight, lying low between its banks.  To infinite distance on every side of them stretched the plain, and the soil here was not golden sand, but curiously black, like powdered coal or lava.  Not a living thing moved near them; only, far away towards the horizon, now and then passed a string of camels of some Bedouins travelling.  They walked on in silence.  Stanhope found the walking heavy, as his heeled boots sank into the loose, black soil, and it was difficult to keep up with the swift, easy steps of the bare black feet beside him.  His duck suit was damp, and the line of flesh exposed between cuff and glove on his wrist was burnt to a livid red already in the smiting heat.  Suddenly Merla’s eyes fell on this, and she stopped.  Over her head she wore a loose veil of coarse white muslin.  As she stopped, she unwound this from her hair, and tore two strips from it.  Stanhope stopped too, well pleased at the pause.