Never before had Mrs. Armine known such a desolation, never had she imagined such a silence as that which lay around their camp, which brooded over this desert, which brooded over the greenish grey waters of this vast lake which was like a sea.

She spoke, and her voice seemed to be taken at once as its prey by the silence.  Even her thought seemed to be seized by it, and to be conveyed away from her like a living thing whose destiny it was to be slain.  She felt paltry, helpless, unmeaning, in the midst of this arid breast of Nature, which was pale as the leper is pale.  She felt chilled, even almost sexless, as if all her powers, all her passions and her desires, had been grasped by the silence, as if they were soon to be taken for ever from her.  Never before had anything that was neither human nor connected in any way with humanity’s efforts and wishes made such a terrific impression upon her.

She hid this impression from Nigel.

The long camel-ride had slightly fatigued her, despite the great strength of body which she had been given by Egypt.  She busied herself in the usual way of a woman arrived from a journey, changed her gown, bathed in a collapsible bath made of India rubber, put eau de Cologne on her forehead, arranged her hair before a mirror pinned to the sloping canvas.  But all the time that she did these things she was listening to the enormous silence, was feeling it like a weight, was shrinking, or trying to shrink away from its outstretched, determined arms.  From without came sometimes sounds of voices that presented themselves to her ears as shadows, skeletons, spectres, present themselves to the eyes.  Was that really Ibrahim?  Was that Nigel speaking, laughing?  And that long stream of words, did it flow from Hamza’s throat?  Or were those shadows outside, with voices of shadows, trying to hold intercourse with shadows?  Presently tea was ready, and she came out into the waste.

They were at a considerable distance from the lake, looking down on it from the slight elevation of a gigantic slope of sand, which rose gradually behind them till in the distance it seemed to touch the stooping grey of the low horizon.  Everywhere white and yellowish white melted into grey and greenish grey.  The only vegetation was a great maze of tamarisk bushes, which stretched from the flat sand-plain on their left to the verge of the lake, and far out into the water, making a refuge and a shelter for the thousands upon thousands of wild duck that peopled the watery waste.  Now, unafraid, they were floating in the open, casting great clouds of velvety black upon the still surface of the lake, which, owing to some atmospheric effect, looked as if it sloped upward like the sands till it met the stooping sky.  Very far off, almost visionary, like blacknesses held partly by the water, and partly by the vapours that muffled the sky, were two or three of the clumsy boats of the wild, almost savage natives who live on the fish of the lake.  Almost imperceptibly they moved about their eerie business.