For, to his stirred imagination the sublimity of the Desert dwarfed humanity.  These people had been wiser to choose another place for the flaunting of their tawdry insignificance.  Any minute this Wilderness, “huddled in grey annihilation,” might awake and notice them ...!

In his own hotel were several “smart,” so-called “Society” people who emphasised the protest in him to the point of definite contempt.  Overdressed, the latest worldly novel under their arms, they strutted the narrow pavements of their tiny world, immensely pleased with themselves.  Their vacuous minds expressed themselves in the slang of their exclusive circle—­value being the element excluded.  The pettiness of their outlook hardly distressed him—­he was too familiar with it at home—­but their essential vulgarity, their innate ugliness, seemed more than usually offensive in the grandeur of its present setting.  Into the mighty sands they took the latest London scandal, gabbling it over even among the Tombs and Temples.  And “it was to laugh,” the pains they spent wondering whom they might condescend to know, never dreaming that they themselves were not worth knowing.  Against the background of the noble Desert their titles seemed the cap and bells of clowns.

And Henriot, knowing some of them personally, could not always escape their insipid company.  Yet he was the gainer.  They little guessed how their commonness heightened contrast, set mercilessly thus beside the strange, eternal beauty of the sand.

Occasionally the protest in his soul betrayed itself in words, which of course they did not understand.  “He is so clever, isn’t he?” And then, having relieved his feelings, he would comfort himself characteristically: 

“The Desert has not noticed them.  The Sand is not aware of their existence.  How should the sea take note of rubbish that lies above its tide-line?”

For Henriot drew near to its great shifting altars in an attitude of worship.  The wilderness made him kneel in heart.  Its shining reaches led to the oldest Temple in the world, and every journey that he made was like a sacrament.  For him the Desert was a consecrated place.  It was sacred.

And his tactful hosts, knowing his peculiarities, left their house open to him when he cared to come—­they lived upon the northern edge of the oasis—­and he was as free as though he were absolutely alone.  He blessed them; he rejoiced that he had come.  Little Helouan accepted him.  The Desert knew that he was there.

* * * * *

From his corner of the big dining-room he could see the other guests, but his roving eye always returned to the figure of a solitary man who sat at an adjoining table, and whose personality stirred his interest.  While affecting to look elsewhere, he studied him as closely as might be.  There was something about the stranger that touched his curiosity—­a certain air of expectation that he wore.  But it