came a multiple consciousness of a thousand other things, all connected with him and her consecrated relation to him.  She quivered with understanding.  All the gates of her soul were being opened, and the white light of comprehension of those things which make life splendid and fruitful was pouring in upon her.  Within the dim, contained space of the palanquin, that was slowly carried onward through the passion of the storm, there was an effulgence of unseen glory that grew in splendour moment by moment.  A woman was being born of a woman, woman who knew herself of woman who did not know herself, woman who henceforth would divinely love her womanhood of woman who had often wondered why she had been created woman.

The words muttered by the man of the sand in Count Anteoni’s garden were coming true.  In the church of Beni-Mora the life of Domini had begun more really than when her mother strove in the pains of childbirth and her first faint cry answered the voice of the world’s light when it spoke to her.

Slowly the caravan moved on.  The camel-drivers sang low under the folds of their haiks those mysterious songs of the East that seem the songs of heat and solitude.  Batouch, smothered in his burnous, his large head sunk upon his chest, slumbered like a potentate relieved from cares of State.  Till Arba was reached his duty was accomplished.  Ali, perched behind him on the camel, stared into the dimness with eyes steady and remote as those of a vulture of the desert.  The houses of Beni-Mora faded in the mist of the sand, the statue of the Cardinal holding the double cross, the tower of the hotel, the shuddering trees of Count Anteoni’s garden.  Along the white blue which was the road the camels painfully advanced, urged by the cries and the sticks of the running drivers.  Presently the brown buildings of old Beni-Mora came partially into sight, peeping here and there through the flying sands and the frantic palm leaves.  The desert was at hand.

Ali began to sing, breathing his song into the back of Batouch’s hood.

     “The love of women is like the holiday song that the boy sings
          gaily
        In the sunny garden—­
     The love of women is like the little moon, the little happy moon
        In the last night of Ramadan. 
     The love of women is like the great silence that steals at dusk
        To kiss the scented blossoms of the orange tree. 
     Sit thee down beneath the orange tree, O loving man! 
     That thou mayst know the kiss that tells the love of women.

“Janat!  Janat!  Janat!”

Batouch stirred uneasily, pulled his hood from his eyes and looked into the storm gravely.  Then he shifted on the camel’s hump and said to Ali: 

“How shall we get to Arba?  The wind is like all the Touaregs going to battle.  And when we leave the oasis——­”

“The wind is going down, Batouch-ben-Brahim,” responded Ali, calmly.  “This evening the Roumis can lie in the tents.”