“Because he does not want a guide every day!  But neither shall I.”

“Madame is quite different.  I would give my life for Madame.”

“Don’t do that, but go this afternoon and find me a horse.  I don’t want a quiet one, but something with devil, something that a Spahi would like to ride.”

The desert spirits were speaking to her body as well as to her mind.  A physical audacity was stirring in her, and she longed to give it vent.

“Madame is like the lion.  She is afraid of nothing.”

“You speak without knowing, Batouch.  Don’t come for me this afternoon, but bring round a horse, if you can find one, to-morrow morning.”

“This very evening I will—­”

“No, Batouch.  I said to-morrow morning.”

She spoke with a quiet but inflexible decision which silenced him.  Then she gave him ten francs and went into the dark house, from which the burning noonday sun was carefully excluded.  She intended to rest after dejeuner, and towards sunset to go to the big hotel and mount alone to the summit of the tower.

It was half-past twelve, and a faint rattle of knives and forks from the salle-a-manger told her that dejeuner was ready.  She went upstairs, washed her face and hands in cold water, stood still while Suzanne shook the dust from her gown, and then descended to the public room.  The keen air had given her an appetite.

The salle-a-manger was large and shady, and was filled with small tables, at only three of which were people sitting.  Four French officers sat together at one.  A small, fat, perspiring man of middle age, probably a commercial traveller, who had eyes like a melancholy toad, was at another, eating olives with anxious rapidity, and wiping his forehead perpetually with a dirty white handkerchief.  At the third was the priest with whom Domini had spoken in the church.  His napkin was tucked under his beard, and he was drinking soup as he bent well over his plate.

A young Arab waiter, with a thin, dissipated face, stood near the door in bright yellow slippers.  When Domini came in he stole forward to show her to her table, making a soft, shuffling sound on the polished wooden floor.  The priest glanced up over his napkin, rose and bowed.  The French officers stared with an interest they were too chivalrous to attempt to conceal.  Only the fat little man was entirely unconcerned.  He wiped his forehead, stuck his fork deftly into an olive, and continued to look like a melancholy toad entangled by fate in commercial pursuits.

Domini’s table was by a window, across which green Venetian shutters were drawn.  It was at a considerable distance from the other guests, who did not live in the house, but came there each day for their meals.  Near it she noticed a table laid for one person, and so arranged that if he came to dejeuner he would sit exactly opposite to her.  She wondered if it was for the man at whom