There was no difficulty in getting her to pose.  The natural attitudes of her race are all perfect poses.  And Merla stood erect, facing the camera, with the emblem of death in her hand.

“Thank you; I am very much obliged!  That’ll be a first-rate picture,” he said gratefully when he had finished, and Merla sat down with a strange swimming feeling of joy rushing over her.  Stanhope was some time fussing with his camera, and putting it back in its case out of the light.  Then he wanted lunch, and drew forth a sandwich-case and a wine-flask.  The girl would only eat very little, and would not taste the wine.  Stanhope, who was very hungry and thirsty, ate all his sandwiches and drank all the wine, and began to feel very bright, refreshed, and exhilarated.

“Do you know you are very beautiful?” he remarked, as he stretched himself comfortably in the shade of the rock and gazed at her, seated sedately on the sand in front of him.

“Beautiful?” she repeated slowly, reflectively, “am I?  The white camel that lives down by the market square is beautiful, and so was the Mahdi’s tomb.”

“Well, you are more beautiful even than the white camel or the Mahdi’s tomb,” returned Stanhope, laughing.  “And what do you think of me?” he added curiously.  “Where do I come in the list? somewhere close after the white camel, I hope.”

Then, as she gazed at him steadfastly, without replying at all, he felt rather piqued, and took off his blue glasses and squared his fine shoulders against the rock.

“Oh, you!” said the girl softly at last, “You are like nothing on earth, lord!  You are like the sun when he first comes over the plain, or the moon at night, when it floats, white and shining, through the blue spaces!”

She sat sedately still, but her breast heaved under the straight, white tunic:  her eyes were full of soft fire:  her voice was low, and quivered with enthusiasm.  Stanhope flushed scarlet.  Confused and startled, he stared into her eyes, and so they sat, silent, gazing at each other.

* * * * *

That same afternoon there was a big fair or bazaar in the trampled mud square in the centre of the Soudanese village that lies higher up the river at the back of Khartoum.  The place was gay with colour and crowded with moving figures.  From long distances, from far-off villages down and up the river, the natives had come in, either to sell or to buy along the wide, dusty road that went out from either side of the square, leading each way north and south.  The mud-huts stood all round the square, backed by some date-palms, for Khartoum and the village behind it are more favoured with shade than sun-baked Omdurman.  And in the centre of the square stood or sat the natives, buying and selling, chaffering and gesticulating.  Some were Bishareens, with straight forms and features, and black bodies almost covered with long strings and chains of beads.  They stood about gracefully