Two
or three in a band they go, led by desert men in blowing white, or again
in a long train of twelve or twenty, their legs a moving lattice, their
heart-shaped feet making a soft, swishing "pad-pad," on the hard road.
The little windows of the squat, domed towers on the hill are like eyes
that spy upon this road,--small, dark and secret eyes, very weary of
seeing nothing better than camels since old days when there were
razzias, and wars, something worth shutting stout gates upon.
When, after three days of travelling, Victoria came southward along this
road, and looked between the flapping carriage curtains at the white
wall that crowned the dull gold hill, her heart beat fast, for the
thought of the golden silence sprang to her mind. The gold did not burn
with the fierce orange flames she had seen in her dreams--it was a
bleached and faded gold, melancholy and almost sinister in colour; yet
it would pass for gold; and a great silence brooded where prairie
blended with desert. She asked no questions of Maieddine, for that was a
rule she had laid upon herself; but when the carriage turned out of the
rough road it had followed so long, and the horses began to climb a
stony track which wound up the yellow hill to the white towers, she
could hardly breathe, for the throbbing in her breast. Always she had
only had to shut her eyes to see Saidee, standing on a high white place,
gazing westward through a haze of gold.
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