They could not see Mademoiselle Soubise until past nine,
so better sleep at Oran, start at dawn, and see something of the
road,--a road more picturesque than any they had travelled.
It was not for Stephen to offer objections, though he was in a mood
which made him long to push on without stopping, even though there were
no motive for haste. He was ashamed of the mood, however, and hardly
understood what it meant, since he had come to Algeria in search of
peace. When first he landed, and until the day of Victoria's letter, he
had been enormously interested in the panorama of the East which passed
before his eyes. He had eagerly noticed each detail of colour and
strangeness, but now, though the London lethargy was gone, in its place
had been born a disturbing restlessness which would not let him look
impersonally at life as at a picture.
Questioning himself as he lay awake in the Oran hotel, with windows open
to the moonlight, Stephen was forced to admit that the picture was
blurred because Victoria had gone out of it. Her figure had been in the
foreground when first he had seen the moving panorama, and all the rest
had been only a magical frame for her. The charm of her radiant youth,
and the romance of the errand which had brought her knocking, when he
knocked, at the door of the East, had turned the glamour into glory. Now
she had vanished; and as her letter said, it might be that she would
never come back.
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