When the light had suddenly closed down upon the two adventurers on the Road of Life, she had been led to the tent adjoining hers, a sudden shyness preventing her from asking where the Arab slept, which she found alight with the soft glow of many candles, and spread with a carpet upon which were many cushions.  The table had certainly been the ground, but everything upon it had been of the daintiest, and all that she had eaten, although she had had no notion of what it had consisted, might have been the outcome of some cordon bleu’s genius.

“Our life is one long picnic,” had replied the Arab to her question anent the cooking facilities in waste places.  “So why should we not all, high and low born, learn to make the picnic pleasant, for behold, we know not what a day may bring forth, nor in what place the night shall find us.”

And Jill came quite suddenly out of her reverie when asked if she would like to go outside for coffee and cigarettes.  “For though the moon in her youth has gone early to bed, the stars are shining like your eyes.”

“Oh,” said she, as she got into a half-sitting position, “I thought we should have to pack up; it’s late already, isn’t it?”

“You are tired from unaccustomed travelling, and your limbs must ache, therefore if it pleases you we will wait until to-morrow night, so that with many baths and much refreshing sleep you will feel glad to mount your camel, who is not the begotten daughter of sin, Taffadaln, and come still further into the desert.”

So Jill went outside the tent and looked up to the blazing stars, and the soft wind blew her hair so that a burnished red-gold perfumed strand fell across the man’s mouth, and behold he trembled, for great was his desire, but greater still his love for this woman.

And when she sat down upon the cushions he stood apart and watched her, until a little hand, like a white moth fluttering in the dark, beckoned him, and he moved towards her and sat at her feet; and the wind, whispered to the palms and the hours fled as the English girl lay on the cushions and listened, and she had learnt of many things before she rose and passed into her tent to sleep again.

Hahmed was of Southern Arabia, and therefore with truth could claim direct descent from Kahtan.  He was the first-born of the great Sheik el Has’ad, his father, and his favourite wife who, on her marriage, besides much wealth, had brought a dowry of purest blood, and wonderful beauty, to her lord and master, so that the man who sat at the English girl’s feet under the stars, and who trembled at her nearness was pur sang, and further than that you cannot go.

Worshipped by his father, idolised by his mother, at the age of ten he bad been betrothed to the daughter, aged seven, of the Sheik el Banjad.  She was also pur sang, and already of looks promising great beauty.