“But you will not come to England?” Beclere did not think it necessary to answer.  “But in France?  You will return to France some day?”

“Why should I?  Whom do I know in France? Je ne suis plus un des votres.  Qu’irais-je y faire? But we are not talking for the last time, Tahar has yet to arrive, he will be here to-morrow and we’ll go hunting; and after our hunting I hope to induce you to stop some while longer.  You see, you haven’t seen the desert; the desert isn’t the desert in spring.  To see the desert you will have to stop till July.  This sea of sand will then be a ring of fire, and that sky, now so mild, will be dark blue and the sun will hang like a furnace in the midst of it.  Stay here even till May and you will see the summer, chez lui.”

X

At the beginning of July Owen appeared on the frontiers of Egypt shrieking for a drink of clean water, and saying that the desire to drink clean water out of a glass represented everything he had to say for the moment about the desert; all the same, he continued to tell of fetid, stale, putrid wells, and of the haunting terror with which the Saharian starts in the morning lest he should find no water at the nearest watering-place, only a green scum fouled by the staling of horses and mules I Owen was as plain-spoken as Shakespeare, so Harding said once, defending his friend’s use of the word “sweat” instead of “perspiration.”  There was no doubt the language was deteriorating, becoming euphonistic; everybody was a euphonist except Owen, who talked of his belly openly, blurting out that he had vomited when he should have said he had been sick.  There were occasions when Harding did not spare Owen and laughed at his peculiarities; but there was always a certain friendliness in his malice, and Owen admired Harding’s intelligence and looked forward to a long evening with him almost as much as he had looked forward to a drink of clean water.  “It will be delightful to talk again to somebody who has seen a picture and read a book,” he said, leaning over the taff-rail of the steamer.  But this dinner did not happen the day he arrived in London—­Harding was out of town!  And Owen cursed his luck as he walked out of the doorway in Victoria Street.  “Staying with friends in the country!” he muttered.  “Good God! will he never weary of those country houses, tedious beyond measure—­with or without adultery,” he chuckled as he walked back to his club thinking out a full-length portrait of his friend—­a small man with high shoulders, a large overhanging forehead, walking on thin legs like one on stilts.  But Harding’s looks mattered little; what people sought Harding for was not for his personal appearance, nor even for his writings, though they were excellent, but for his culture.  A curious, clandestine little man with a warm heart despite the exterior.  Owen had seen Harding’s eyes nil with tears and his voice tremble when he recited a beautiful passage