And a great silence fell on the girl as they left the town, padding
noiselessly through the outskirts where no one met them, and no sound
was to be heard save for the barking of dogs, and the occasional wail
of an infant; for the strangeness of everything had suddenly made her
realise that of her own will she was standing on the threshold of a new
life, laden--though this the usual narrow outlook and education of the
West prevented her from understanding--with a love and passion and
womanhood which cannot, and never will be, realised in countries where
the dominant colour is grey.

Gone was her laughter, and vanished the merry exclamations and remarks,
as she began to glean some idea of the width and breadth of the desert
which was slowly engulfing her.

Once or twice she had looked behind at the ever-receding town, with the
sheen of the fresh water canal becoming fainter and fainter at each
step, until it at last vanished into nothingness. And the living
silence of the desert seemed to close in upon her, and the canopy of
heaven, weighty with stars, to press down upon her, and the snapping
and breaking of generations-rooted conventions to deafen her, until
like a lost child she suddenly sobbed, and dropping the rein, held out
her hands to the man who, although she knew it not, had been watching
and waiting for just such an outburst.

For he worshipped the sand and pebbles and rocks and dunes and hills of
his adored desert, and knew the effect it sometimes made, even at the
paltry distance of a mile or two from some teeming city, upon both male
and female denizens of the West, who bloom palely in the heat of a
coal-fire, and lift their faces thankfully to the red lozenge which,