That girl Beclere’s mistress!  Why not?  The thought pleased and amused him, reconciled him to Beclere, whom he never should have thought capable of such fine discrimination.  But it did not follow that because Beclere had chosen a beautiful girl to love he was susceptible to artistic influences, sculpture excepted.  Of the other arts Owen felt instinctively that Beclere knew nothing; indeed, yester evening, when he, Owen, had spoken of “The Ring,” Beclere had answered that his business in life had not allowed him to cultivate musical tastes.  He had once liked music, but now it interested him no longer.

“Tastes atrophy.”

“Of course they do,” Owen had answered, and Beclere’s knowledge of himself propitiated Owen, who recognised a clever man in the remark, a man of many sympathies, though the exterior was prosaic.  All the same Owen would have wished for some music in the evening, and for some musical assistance, for while waiting for the eagles to arrive he spent his time thinking how he might write the songs he heard every morning among the palm-trees; written down they did not seem nearly as original as they did on the lips, and Owen suspected his notation to be deficient.  A more skilful musician would be able to get more of these rhythms on paper than he had been able to do, and he regretted his failures, for it would be interesting to bring home some copies of these songs just to show...

But he would never see her again, so what was the good of writing down these songs?  What was the good of anything?  A strange thing life is, and he paused to consider how the slightest event, the fact that he was unable to give complete expression on paper to an Arab rhythm, brought the old pain back again, and every pang of it.  Even the society of Beclere was answerable for his suffering, and he thought how he must go away and travel again; only open solitude and wandering with rough men could still his pain; primitive Nature was the one balm....  That fellow Tahar—­why did he delay?  Owen thought of the eagles, the awful bird pursuing the fleeting deer, and himself riding in pursuit.  This was the life that would cure him—­ how soon?  In three months? in six? in ten years?  It would be strange if he were to become a bedouin for love of her, and he walked on thinking how they had lain together one night listening to the silence, hearing nothing but an acacia moving outside their window.  Beclere was coming towards him and the vision vanished.

“No news of Tahar yet?”

“No; you are forgetting that we are living in an oasis, where letters are not delivered, and where we bring news of ourselves, and where no news is understood to mean that the spring we were hastening towards was dry, or that a sand-storm—­”

“Sand-storms are rare at this season of the year.”

“An old bedouin like Tahar is safe enough.  To-morrow or the day after... but I see you are impatient, you are growing tired of my company.”