he was creating for the future poet be spoilt if he were to fall in love with an Arab maiden, some little statuette carved in yellow ivory?  Or would it be enhanced?  Would the future Virgil regard her as an assuagement, a balm?  Owen laughed at himself and his dream.  But his mood drifted into sadness; and he asked if Evelyn should be punished.  If so, what punishment would the poet devise for her?  In Theocritus somebody had been punished:  a cruel one, who had refused to relieve the burden of desire even with a kiss, had been killed by a seemingly miraculous interposition of Love, who, angered at the sight of the unhappy lover hanging from the neck by the lintel of the doorpost, fell from his pedestal upon the beloved, while he stood heart-set watching the bathers in the beautiful bathing-places.

But Owen could not bring himself to wish for Evelyn’s death by the falling of a statue of Our Lady or St. Joseph; such a death would be a contemptible one, and he could not wish that anything contemptible should happen to her, however cruelly she had made him suffer.  No, he did not wish that any punishment should befall her; the fault was not hers.  And he returned in thought to the end which he had devised for himself—­a passing into the desert, leaving no trace but the single fact that on a certain day he had joined a caravan.  Going whither?  Timbuctoo?  To be slain there—­an English traveller seeking forgetfulness of a cruel mistress—­would be a romantic end for him!  But if his end were captivity, slavery?  His thoughts turned from Timbuctoo to one of the many oases between Tunis and the Soudan.  In one of these it would be possible to make friends with an Arab chieftain and to live.  But would she, whose body was the colour of amber, or the desert, or any other invention his fancy might devise, relieve him from the soul-sickness from which he suffered?  It seemed to him that nothing would.  All the same, he would have to try to forget her, “Evelyn, Evelyn.”

The bournous which his Arab servant brought in at that moment might help him.  A change of language would be a help, and he might become a Moslem—­for he believed in Mohammedanism as much as in Christianity; and an acceptance of the Koran would facilitate travelling in the desert.  That and a little Arabic, a few mouthfuls, and no Mahdi would dare to enslave him....  But if he were only sure that none would!

Outside horses were stamping, his escort, seven Arab horses with seven Arabs from the desert, or thereabout, in high-pummelled saddles, wearing white bournous, their brown, lean hands grasping long-barrelled guns with small carven stocks.  The white Arab which Owen had purchased yesterday waited, the saddle empty; and, looking at him before mounting, Owen thought the horse the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, more like an ornament than a live thing, an object of luxury rather than of utility.  Was he really going to ride this horse for many hours?  To do