the letter he had written to Hylda, which was the turning-point of all
for her, he had spoken of these "key-thoughts." With all the
childishness he showed at times, he had wisely felt his way into spheres
where life had depth and meaning. The desert had justified him to
himself and before the spirits of departed peoples, who wandered over the
sands, until at last they became sand also, and were blown hither and
thither, to make beds for thousands of desert wayfarers, or paths for
camels' feet, or a blinding storm to overwhelm the traveller and the
caravan; Life giving and taking, and absorbing and destroying, and
destroying and absorbing, till the circle of human existence wheel
to the full, and the task of Time be accomplished.

On the gorse-grown common above Hamley, David and Faith, and David's
mother Mercy, had felt the same soul of things stirring--in the green
things of green England, in the arid wastes of the Libyan desert, on the
bosom of the Nile, where Mahommed Hassan now lay in a nugger singing a
song of passion, Nature, with burning voice, murmuring down the unquiet
world its message of the Final Peace through the innumerable years.




GLOSSARY

Aiwa----Yes.
Allah hu Achbar----God is most Great.
Al'mah----Female professional singers, signifying "a learned female."
Ardab----A measure equivalent to five English bushels.

Backsheesh----Tip, douceur.