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Updated: May 17, 2025
Maïeddine had taken the tickets already, but he did not tell her the name of the place to which they were going by rail. She would have liked to ask, but as neither Si Maïeddine nor Lella M'Barka encouraged questions, she reminded herself that she could easily read the names of the stations as they passed.
Victoria sat beside her, Maïeddine opposite, and Fafann waited upon them as they ate. After supper, while the Bedouin woman saw that everything was ready for her mistress and the Roumia, in their tent, M'Barka spread out her precious sand from Mecca and the dunes round her own Touggourt.
Maïeddine thought that the douar and the Agha's state must impress her; and the journey on from there would be a splendid experience, different indeed from this interminable jogging along, cramped up in a carriage, with M'Barka sighing, or leaning a heavy head on the girl's shoulder.
Her large luggage could be stored at the hotel until she returned or sent, and as Lella M'Barka intended to offer her an outfit suitable to a young Arab girl of noble birth, she need take from the hotel only her toilet things. So it was that Victoria wrote to Stephen Knight, and was ready for the second stage of what seemed the one great adventure to which her whole life had been leading up.
He was too complimentary, that was all; and the difference in his manner might arise from knowing her more intimately. Probably Lella M'Barka, like many elderly women of other and newer civilizations, was over-romantic; and the best thing was to prevent her from putting ridiculous ideas into Maïeddine's head. Such ideas would spoil the rest of the journey for both.
She wished it were not the Arab way to pay so many. He had been different at first; and feeling the change in him with a faint stirring of uneasiness, she hurried her steps to join M'Barka. The invalid reclined on a rug of golden jackal skins, and rested a thin elbow on cushions of dyed leather, braided in intricate strips by Touareg women.
The perfume of ambre, loved in the East, came up to her nostrils, and the invalid's breath was aflame. "Art thou strong enough for a journey, Lella M'Barka?" the girl asked. "Not in my own strength, but in that which Allah will give me, I shall be strong," the sick woman answered with controlled passion.
In a long day, they came to Bou-Saada, reaching the hidden oasis after nightfall, and staying in the house of the Caïd with whom Stephen and Nevill had talked of Ben Halim. Lella M'Barka was related to the Caïd's wife, and was so happy in meeting a cousin after years of separation, that the fever in her blood was cooled; and in the morning she was able to go on.
She felt very desolate, alone with Maïeddine among the dunes. She would not dare to call Stephen now, lest he should hear and come. Nevertheless she could not be wholly unhappy, for it was wonderful to have learned what love was. She loved Stephen Knight. "Thou wilt let me go back to M'Barka?" she said to Maïeddine. "I will take thee back," he amended. "Because I have thy promise."
Hsina would help her in the morning, she was told, but it would be better that she should know how to do things properly for herself, since only Fafann would be with them on the journey, and she might sometimes be busy with Lella M'Barka when Victoria was dressing. The excitement of adorning the beautiful doll had tired the invalid.
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