Outside, freed from the shadow of the tent, she felt less oppressed, though still melancholy, and even slightly apprehensive, as if some trouble were coming to her and were near at hand.  Mentally she had made the tower the limit of her walk, and therefore when she reached it she stood still.

It was a squat, square tower, strongly constructed, with loopholes in the four sides, and now that she was by it she saw built out at the back of it a low house with small shuttered windows and a narrow courtyard for mules.  No doubt Androvsky was right and French soldiers had once been here to work the optic telegraph.  She thought of the recruits and of Marseilles, of Notre Dame de la Garde, the Mother of God, looking towards Africa.  Such recruits came to live in such strange houses as this tower lost in the desert and now abandoned.  She glanced at the shuttered windows and turned back towards the tent; but something in the situation of the tower—­perhaps the fact that it was set on the highest point of the ground—­attracted her, and she presently made Batouch bring her out some rugs and ensconced herself under its shadow, facing the mirage sea.

How long she sat there she did not know.  Mirage hypnotises the imaginative and suggests to them dreams strange and ethereal, sad sometimes, as itself.  How long she might have sat there dreaming, but for an interruption, she knew still less.  It was towards evening, however, but before evening had fallen, that a weary and travel-stained party of three French soldiers, Zouaves, and an officer rode slowly up the sandy track from the dunes.  They were mounted on mules, and carried their small baggage with them on two led mules.  When they reached the top of the hill they turned to the right and came towards the tower.  The officer was a little in advance of his men.  He was a smart-looking, fair man of perhaps thirty-two, with blonde moustaches, blue eyes with blonde lashes, and hair very much the colour of the sand dunes.  His face was bright red, burnt, as a fair delicate skin burns, by the sun.  His eyes, although protected by large sun spectacles, were inflamed.  The skin was peeling from his nose.  His hair was full of sand, and he rode leaning forward over his animal’s neck, holding the reins loosely in his hands, that seemed nerveless from fatigue.  Yet he looked smart and well-bred despite his evident exhaustion, as if on parade he would be a dashing officer.  It was evident that both he and his men were riding in from some tremendous journey.  The latter looked dog-tired, scarcely human in their collapse.  They kept on their mules with difficulty, shaking this way and that like sacks, with their unshaven chins wagging loosely up and down.  But as they saw the tower they began to sing in chorus half under their breath, and leaning their broad hands on the necks of the beasts for support they looked with a sort of haggard eagerness in its direction.