“Where are we going?  Oh woman, who has placed her hand in mine, we journey to my own country, unto the desert of Arabia, until we shall come to the place which was mine, but now is yours.  Although, verily, it is unworthy of your eyes, you will bear with it for a few moons, until a habitation worthy of your beauty is erected.  Nay, as oasis, it is not over large, but it is fertile beyond thought.  Many have essayed to steal it by force of arms, or buy it, but I prevailed through the magic of much wealth and the virtue of patience.  I bought it bit by bit from those who owned it, and now they rent it from me—­I did not want their money, but I desired to make the ground productive and the people happy.

“The grain plains require good workmen, also my date groves, my paddocks, and stables for camels and horses.  The fruit and vegetables and other produce, which were once mine and now are yours, are cultivated and tended by some hundreds of especially trained men, who, with their wives and numerous offspring, live in the shadow of the acacia, loving, quarrelling, hating, dying, but always happy.  My own habitation is in the shade of the palms, removed from the unseemly wailing of children and barking of dogs, and as I have told you, no woman has placed foot therein, save for the hunchback.  Verily the flat oasis is unique in the desert annals, and to bring unto perfection requires but a son to take on the work, when these mine hands are clasped in the handshake of death.”

But those very hands showed no sign of their master’s desire to close them upon those clasped whitely round the girl’s knees, neither did his voice portray the desire of possession raging within him as he continued speaking.

“If later you should desire to travel, then shall the boats, the cars which were mine, but are now yours, be at your disposal, so that in comfort shall your journey be made, wiping out the bitter memory of this your first.”

But there was no doubt about it that Jill was suffering acutely from a cumulative fatigue, engendered by the unaccustomed mode of travelling, the intense heat through which she essayed to sleep during the day, the biting cold at night, when the temperature fell many degrees, as is its agonising wont in that part of the world, the strain of the mind as it valiantly essayed to accustom itself to the new way of everything; but above all, the inability to change her under raiment, which, strive against it as she would, managed to conceal particles of sand and insects, which, though they did not bite, crawled most successfully and irritatingly.