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"Here are the witnesses," said Abdullah, "ready to be Christians." "It is not necessary," said the priest, "if they can make their mark; that is all that is required." So, in the little hut, before an improvised altar, they were married the camel-driver and the daughter of the Chief of Ouled Nail. The next morning the caravan took up the march for Biskra.

At first I would have refused even to take the message, but her woman, Hadda, is my cousin, and she feared to go back without some answer. The Ouled Naïl is a demon when in a temper, and she would thrust pins into Hadda's arms and thighs." Saidee blushed with anger, disgustful words tingling on her tongue; but she remained silent, her lips parted. "Of course I won't go," said Victoria, shocked.

On the wall immediately behind him was a brilliantly-coloured drawing of a fat Ouled Nail leering at a French soldier, which made an unconventional background to his leaning figure and sunburnt face, in which there seemed now to be both asceticism and something so different and so powerful that it was likely, from moment to moment, to drive out the asceticism and to achieve the loneliness of all conquering things.

Hate me to-night, but in your hatred believe that I never loved you as I love you now." "Give me your truth," she said. They remained standing at the tent door, with the growing moonlight about them. The camp was hushed in sleep, but sounds of music still came to them from the city below them, and fainter music from the tents of the Ouled Nails on the sandhill to the south.

Beyond, were the heads of many camels. The commandant threw up the sash. Across the silent square came a woman's voice, speaking Arabic in the dialect of Ouled Nail. "That is Mirza," said the lawyer. Then there came a man's voice, evidently in reply. "That is Abdullah," said the lawyer. "How can you distinguish at this distance?" asked the commandant. The lawyer shrugged his shoulders.

She and Batouch went away at a rapid pace, circled round the Arab cemetery, made a detour towards the south, and then cantered into the midst of the camps of the Ouled Nails. It was the hour of the siesta.

Batouch shot a glance at Hadj and smiled unpleasantly. "I will come with Madame." Batouch still smiled. "We are going to the Ouled Nails," he said significantly to Hadj. "I I will come." They set out. Suzanne looked gently at the poet's legs and seemed comforted. "Take great care of Mademoiselle Suzanne," Domini said to the poet. "She is a little nervous in the dark."

Soon after, he passed through the belt of black tents which at all seasons encircles Oued Tolga as a girdle encircles the waist of an Ouled Naïl, and so he rode into the strange city. The houses were crowded together, two with one wall between, like Siamese twins, and they had the pale yellow-brown colour of honeycomb, in the evening light.

Among them were a few soldiers, whose uniforms glowed red in the twilight, like the cigarette ends pulsing between the painted lips of the Ouled Naïls. All that quarter reeked with the sweet, wicked smell of the East; and in the Moorish café at the far end, the dancing-music had begun to throb and whine, mingling cries of love and death, with the passion of both.

Greyne began seriously to consider whether it would not be better to pay him a last douceur, and tell him to go about his business. Before doing this, however, Mr. Greyne desired to have one more interview with the mysterious Ouled on the heights, to whom he owed the knowledge which would henceforth enable him to cut out the militia. He said so to Abdallah Jack.