"Dear little Babe! Mine is a terrible world. You must get out of it as
soon as you can, or you'll never get out at all."
"Never till I take you with me."
"Don't say that! I must send you away. I _must_--no matter how hard it
may be to part from you," Saidee insisted. "You don't know what you're
talking about. How should you? I suppose you must have heard
_something_. You must anyhow suspect there's a secret?"
"Yes, Si Maieddine told me that. He said, when I talked of my sister,
and how I was trying to find her, that he'd once known Cassim. I had to
agree not to ask questions,--and he would never say for certain whether
Cassim was dead or not, but he promised sacredly to bring me to the
place where my sister lived. His cousin Lella M'Barka Bent Djellab was
with us,--very ill and suffering, but brave. We started from Algiers,
and he made a mystery even of the way we came, though I found out the
names of some places we passed, like El Aghouat and Ghardaia----"
Saidee's eyes widened with a sudden flash. "What, you came here by El
Aghouat and Ghardaia?"
"Yes. Isn't that the best way?"
"The best, if the longest is the best. I don't know much about North
Africa geographically. They've taken care I shouldn't know! But I--I've
lately found out from--a person who's made the journey, that one can get
here from Algiers in a week or eight days. Seventeen hours by train to
Biskra: Biskra to Touggourt two long days in a diligence, or carriage
with plenty of horses; Touggourt to Oued Tolga on camel or horse, or
mule, in three or four days going up and down among the great dunes.
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