final look at the stars and Desert stirred. The two were somehow
inter-related.

Some hours later, before this surface sleep passed into genuine slumber,
Henriot woke--with an appalling feeling that the Desert had come
creeping into his room and now stared down upon him where he lay in bed.
The wind was crying audibly about the walls outside. A faint, sharp
tapping came against the window panes.

He sprang instantly out of bed, not yet awake enough to feel actual
alarm, yet with the nightmare touch still close enough to cause a sort
of feverish, loose bewilderment. He switched the lights on. A moment
later he knew the meaning of that curious tapping, for the rising wind
was flinging tiny specks of sand against the glass. The idea that they
had summoned him belonged, of course, to dream.

He opened the window, and stepped out on to the balcony. The stone was
very cold under his bare feet. There was a wash of wind all over him. He
saw the sheet of glimmering, pale desert near and far; and something
stung his skin below the eyes.

"The sand," he whispered, "again the sand; always the sand. Waking or
sleeping, the sand is everywhere--nothing but sand, sand, Sand...."

He rubbed his eyes. It was like talking in his sleep, talking to Someone
who had questioned him just before he woke. But was he really properly
awake? It seemed next day that he had dreamed it. Something enormous,
with rustling skirts of sand, had just retreated far into the Desert.
Sand went with it--flowing, trailing, smothering the world. The wind
died down.