The camel, lurching and groaning, staggering and heaving, got to its knees in just the same way as Taffadaln had done over twenty years ago; just as the camel will do twenty centuries hence, if it has not become extinct through some button, or wire, or wave, or ray which will have turned the desert into a kind of international piazza into the middle of which, for our post-prandial coffee and cigarette, we shall be conveyed in a few moments by means of something wireless, for so much cash down in advance, which will include the tip to the Bedouin waiter.

One can see empires and deserts disappearing, but the tipping system—­never!

And as Wellington would not let go of the book his mistress had left him as guarantee of her return, so as to grip the back of the seat in his powerful jaw, he came nigh to being strangled as he lurched and swung and bumped as the camel got to its knees, which seemed to be legion as it tucked its legs under and untucked them, and did it all over again with vociferous lamentations until it had got them all neatly folded up; and once standing four-square upon the sand, he wrinkled his nose in disgust and removed himself some yards from the odour of this unpleasant complaining brute which hailed undoubtedly from the bazaar, and gave disgusting and crude imitations in its throat of water being poured out of a small-necked bottle.

He wanted his mistress, and her only, so, having no use for or interest in this woman who had brought him, for no apparent reason, upon such an uncomfortable journey, he simply took matters into his own big head and without a with or by your leave waddled off, book in slobbering mouth, to look for his beloved, whom—­his olfactory powers not being of the keenest—­he felt to be somewhere in the neighbourhood, perhaps playing at hide-and-seek behind the tents, as she did on wet mornings at home behind the Chesterfield.

Jill dismounted and stood facing the desert, which seemed to stretch as one vast purple pall; and as she stood she wrestled with a mighty fear which held her so that she could not turn and go towards the tent through which shone the orange light.

She did not say to herself that her son had gone out with his horses and his dogs; she did not try to trick herself with the thought that perhaps he slept in his purple tent, and for that reason had not rushed out hot-foot across the desert to meet and lift her from the camel.

She knew that she had only to turn and walk the few yards to the tent to have all her questions answered, but she also knew that all she wanted to do was to stand on and on and on, just as she was, with her face towards the night, and her back to the dawn of another day, and definite knowledge.

She loved her other sons deeply and dearly; she loved her little daughter; but her first-born held equal place in her heart with the Arab his father, and her love for him was beyond words and almost too great and too holy a thing to be written about here.