He loved her and to her had pitched his tents.

He prayed that he might be with her when he died, and, convinced that his prayer would be answered, he had pitched him a funeral tent between those of Purple and of Gold.

Bewitched of the desert, the colour of the tents resembled those in which she decks herself in the passing of a day and a night.

Outwardly they were just ordinary Bedouin tents, the tan and brown of camel-hide; flat-roofed and square, giving a full-grown man room in which to move and stand to his full stature without the fear—­as in the peaked affair called bell—­of bringing the whole thing down upon his crown.  They lifted at each side to allow the desert wind to enter at any hour it listed; or the moon to pierce him with silvery spear; or the stars to blaze like jewels before his eyes, as he waited for sleep on a rug upon the sand.

The one in which he slept was hung inside with satin curtains of deepest purple, with here and there a star of silver, which glittered in the light of the cut-crystal lamp which hung from the cross-pole.  The Persian rug upon the floor was grey and old rose and faintest yellow, and glistened like the skin of woman; of the ordinary furnishings of an ordinary bedroom there was no sign—­you would have to go much farther afield to find the tent with all the paraphernalia of the toilet.  Just as you would have to go still farther and towards the west, to where were pitched the stables, and the quarters of the specially-chosen servants he took with him in his desert wanderings; just enough—­and they had their work cut out—­to look after the dogs and birds and horses.  The camels, upon whom depended the supplies, were right out of sight, and any one of the servants would have preferred death by torture to approaching within a mile of his master’s tents until he heard his call.

In the other tent he ate his bread and dates and drank his coffee or received the humblest of his passing brothers; those who, scorched with heat, tortured with thirst or hunger, and blinded with flying sand, yet would not exchange one minute of their own free desert life for an eternity of soft couches and the most succulent effort of a cordon bleu in the cramped surroundings of a crowded city.

It was hung with orange satin; cushions of every hue were flung upon a carpet of violent colours; the lamps of bronze with wicks floating in crimson saucers, hanging from the crosspole, were rarely lit; the satin curtains hid a smaller room behind filled with dates and coffee-beans, sweetmeats, beads and other things which bring joy to the grateful heart of the wandering Arab and his family.

The sand outside was marked and pressed, down with footprints of men and women and little children.

They had not to ask in order to receive.

But no foot but his had ever trod the fine matting of the tent between the other two.

Firmly convinced that his prayer would be granted and that in the desert he would find the answer to the many questions which had occurred to him to ask of life, he had sought for a covering under which he could lie after death until naught but his bones should be left for the wind of chance to play with.