Studiously buttoning up the last button which she always left undone on her last pair of suede gloves, smooth as a newly born whippet puppy, and as yet unruffled from the cleaner’s manipulations, she spoke with a ripple of laughter which made it impossible to decide if she was speaking seriously or not.

“Madame permits herself to do just as she pleases.  If by some unforeseen circumstances she were to miss the train, would she be taken to see the oasis, and the horses, and the stars?”

And let it be understood that, in her utter ignorance of deserts, she imagined the oasis could be reached after a journey of a few hours.

For one moment there was dead silence between these two, the strings of whose lives Fate was inextricably mixing in her fingers, palsied by age, and fretted by the constant tugging and straining of those other threads which, in moments of senile anger or childishness, she gets into such hopeless tangles.

Then as the shriek of an engine whistle shrilled faintly in the distance the man spoke, his voice sinking to that deep note which no other nation attains, resembling in no way the Russian bass, and which in the Arab upon rare occasions alone betrays some emotional upheaval.

“Listen, woman of the West, who even at this moment stands in my shadow, between that faint engine whistle and the grinding of the brakes as the train comes to a standstill, you must make your choice.  A few moments ago I saw you toss a silver coin and decide quickly that which had been decided already for you since the beginning of all time.

“Once more you shall cast your die.  The table is the sand of Egypt, the dice-cup is your hand, the dice are your life and my life, the stakes our happiness.  Decide again and quickly for I hear the rumbling of wheels.  Make known your choice, for although we travellers through the desert of life lie down to sleep, and rise again to live, to fight, to hate, and above all to love, in obedience to the will which counteth and heapeth the particles of sand upon this station, yet are we allowed, to voice our desires, being mouth-pieces of Fate.  Nay! wait one moment until I make clear the way, so that you may not put down your beautiful feet blindly upon a trackless waste of doubt and mistrust.  If you come with me to-night, you come alone.  I have no woman in my desert home, excepting one old hunchback slave, a withered bough but faithful.  No woman has set foot within the belt of palms surrounding my house, and without the sand stretches!  Mile upon mile of pathless sand!

“You will come into the desert alone with me, and the sand will close in upon you and keep you in the desert alone—­with me!

“If you come, be at the gate of yonder pink house at nine to-night; if you are not there I shall know that your heart has failed.”

But the soul of the desert glinted for one moment in the English girl’s eyes.