sand to behave as they do.’  What is my business?  I can’t convert them.  I can’t change their morals.  I must just be a friend to them, cheer them up in their sorrows, give them a bit if they’re starving, doctor them a little.  I’m a first-rate hand at making an Arab take a pill or a powder!—­when they are ill, and make them at home with the white marabout.  That’s what the sun has taught me, and every sand-rascal and sand-rascal’s child in Amara is a friend of mine.”

He stretched out his legs as if he wished to elongate his satisfaction, and stared Domini full in the face with eyes that confidently, naively, asked for her approval of his doctrine of the sun.  She could not help liking him, though she felt more as if she were sitting with a jolly, big, and rather rowdy boy than with a priest.

“You are fond of the Arabs then?” she said.

“Of course I am, Madame.  I can speak their language, and I’m as much at home in their tents, and more, than I should ever be at the Vatican—­with all respect to the Holy Father.”

He got up, went out into the sand, expectorated noisily, then returned to the tent, wiping his bearded mouth with a large red cotton pocket-handkerchief.

“Are you staying here long, Madame?”

He sat down again in his chair, making it creak with his substantial weight.

“I don’t know.  If my husband is happy here.  But he prefers the solitudes, I think.”

“Does he?  And yet he’s gone into the city.  Plenty of bustle there at night, I can tell you.  Well, now, I don’t agree with your husband.  I know it’s been said that solitude is good for the sad, but I think just the contrary.  Ah!”

The last sonorously joyous exclamation jumped out of Father Beret at the sight of Ouardi, who at this moment entered with a large tray, covered with a coffee-pot, cups, biscuits, bon-bons, cigars, and a bulging flask of some liqueur flanked by little glasses.

“You fare generously in the desert I see, Madame,” he exclaimed.  “And so much the better.  What’s your servant’s name?”

Domini told him.

“Ouardi! that means born in the time of the roses.”  He addressed Ouardi in Arabic and sent him off into the darkness chuckling gaily.  “These Arab names all have their meanings—­Onlagareb, mother of scorpions, Omteoni, mother of eagles, and so on.  So much the better!  Comforts are rare here, but you carry them with you.  Sugar, if you please.”

Domini put two lumps into his cup.

“If you allow me!”

He added two more.

“I never refuse a good cigar.  These harmless joys are excellent for man.  They help his Christianity.  They keep him from bitterness, harsh judgments.  But harshness is for northern climes—­rainy England, eh?  Forgive me, Madame.  I speak in joke.  You come from England perhaps.  It didn’t occur to me that—­”

They both laughed.  His garrulity was irresistible and made Domini feel as if she were sitting with a child.  Perhaps he caught her feeling, for he added: