“I couldn’t get it down, Mam’zelle.”

“Would you like to see if you can get a cup of coffee here?”

“No, thank you, Mam’zelle.  I couldn’t touch this Arab stuff.”

“We shall soon be there now.”

Suzanne made all her naturally small features look much smaller, glanced down at her skirt, and suddenly began to shake the grains of sand from it in an outraged manner, at the same time extending her left foot.  Two or three young Arabs came up and stood, staring, round her.  Their eyes were magnificent, and gravely observant.  Suzanne went on shaking and patting her skirt, and Domini walked away down the platform, wondering what a French maid’s mind was like.  Suzanne’s certainly had its limitations.  It was evident that she was horrified by the sight of bare legs.  Why?

As Domini walked along the platform among the fruit-sellers, the guides, the turbaned porters with their badges, the staring children and the ragged wanderers who thronged about the train, she thought of the desert to which she was now so near.  It lay, she knew, beyond the terrific wall of rock that faced her.  But she could see no opening.  The towering summits of the cliffs, jagged as the teeth of a wolf, broke crudely upon the serene purity of the sky.  Somewhere, concealed in the darkness of the gorge at their feet, was the mouth from which had poured forth that wonderful breath, quivering with freedom and with unearthly things.  The sun was already declining, and the light it cast becoming softened and romantic.  Soon there would be evening in the desert.  Then there would be night.  And she would be there in the night with all things that the desert holds.

A train of camels was passing on the white road that descended into the shadow of the gorge.  Some savage-looking men accompanied them, crying continually, “Oosh!  Oosh!” They disappeared, desert-men with their desert-beasts, bound no doubt on some tremendous journey through the regions of the sun.  Where would they at last unlade the groaning camels?  Domini saw them in the midst of dunes red with the dying fires of the west.  And their shadows lay along the sands like weary things reposing.

She started when a low voice spoke to her in French, and, turning round, saw a tall Arab boy, magnificently dressed in pale blue cloth trousers, a Zouave jacket braided with gold, and a fez, standing near her.  She was struck by the colour of his skin, which was faint as the colour of cafe au lait, and by the contrast between his huge bulk and his languid, almost effeminate, demeanour.  As she turned he smiled at her calmly, and lifted one hand toward the wall of rock.

“Madame has seen the desert?” he asked.

“Never,” answered Domini.

“It is the garden of oblivion,” he said, still in a low voice, and speaking with a delicate refinement that was almost mincing.  “In the desert one forgets everything; even the little heart one loves, and the desire of one’s own soul.”