“Madame!  Madame!”

Batouch’s voice was calling her.  She galloped faster, like one in flight.  Her horse’s feet padded over sand almost as softly as a camel’s.  The vast dimness was surely coming to meet her, to take her to itself in the night.  But suddenly Batouch rode furiously up beside her, his burnous flying out behind him over his red saddle.

“Madame, we must not go further, we must keep near the oasis.”

“Why?”

“It is not safe at night in the desert, and besides—­”

His horse plunged and nearly rocketed against hers.  She pulled in.  His company took away her desire to keep on.

“Besides?”

Leaning over his saddle peak he said, mysteriously: 

“Besides, Madame, someone has been following us all the way from Beni-Mora.”

“Who?”

“A horseman.  I have heard the beat of the hoofs on the hard road.  Once I stopped and turned, but I could see nothing, and then I could hear nothing.  He, too, had stopped.  But when I rode on again soon I heard him once more.  Someone found out we were going and has come after us.”

She looked back into the violet night without speaking.  She heard no sound of a horse, saw nothing but the dim track and the faint, shadowy blackness where the palms began.  Then she put her hand into the pocket of her saddle and silently held up a tiny revolver.

“I know, but there might be more than one.  I am not afraid, but if anything happens to Madame no one will ever take me as a guide any more.”

She smiled for a moment, but the smile died away, and again she looked into the night.  She was not afraid physically, but she was conscious of a certain uneasiness.  The day had been long and troubled, and had left its mark upon her.  Restlessness had driven her forth into the darkness, and behind the restlessness there was a hint of the terror of which she had been aware when she was left alone in the salle-a-manger.  Was it not that vague terror which, shaking the restlessness, had sent her to the white house by the triple palm tree, had brought her now to the desert? she asked herself, while she listened, and the hidden horseman of whom Batouch had spoken became in her imagination one with the legendary victims of fate; with the Jew by the cross roads, the mariner beating ever about the rock-bound shores of the world, the climber in the witches’ Sabbath, the phantom Arab in the sand.  Still holding her revolver, she turned her horse and rode slowly towards the distant fires, from which came the barking of the dogs.  At some hundreds of yards from them she paused.

“I shall stay here,” she said to Batouch.  “Where does the moon rise?”

He stretched his arm towards the desert, which sloped gently, almost imperceptibly, towards the east.

“Ride back a little way towards the oasis.  The horseman was behind us.  If he is still following you will meet him.  Don’t go far.  Do as I tell you, Batouch.”