What if this were the high white
place? What if already Si Maieddine was bringing her to Saidee?
They had been only three days on the way so far, it was true, and she
had been told that the journey would be very, very long. Still, Arabs
were subtle, and Si Maieddine might have wanted to test her courage.
Looking back upon those long hours, now, towards evening of the third
day, it seemed to Victoria that she had been travelling for a week in
the swaying, curtained carriage, with the slow-trotting mules.
Just at first, there had been some fine scenery to hold her interest;
far-off mountains of grim shapes, dark as iron, and spotted with snow as
a leper is spotted with scales. Then had come low hills, following the
mountains (nameless to her, because Maieddine had not cared to name
them), and blue lakes of iris flowing over wide plains. But by and by
the plains flattened to dullness; a hot wind ceaselessly flapped the
canvas curtains, and Lella M'Barka sighed and moaned with the fatigue of
constant motion. There was nothing but plain, endless plain, and
Victoria had been glad, for her own sake as well as the invalid's, when
night followed the first day. They had stopped on the outskirts of a
large town, partly French, partly Arab, passing through and on to the
house of a caid who was a friend of Si Maieddine's. It was a primitively
simple house, even humble, it seemed to the girl, who had as yet no
conception of the bareness and lack of comfort--according to Western
ideas--of Arab country-houses.
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