"It is my brother-in-law, Abderrhaman ben Douadi," exclaimed Maïeddine, waving his hand.
M'Barka pulled her veil closer, and because she did so, Victoria hid her face also, rather than shock the Arab woman's prejudices.
At a word from his master, the driver stopped his mules so quickly as to bring them on their haunches, and Maïeddine sprang out. He and his brother-in-law, a stately dark man with a short black beard under an eagle nose, exchanged courtesies which seemed elaborate to Victoria's European ideas, and Si Abderrhaman did not glance at the half-lowered curtains behind which the women sat.
The men talked for a few minutes; then Maïeddine got into the carriage again; and surrounded by the riders, it was driven rapidly towards the tents, rocking wildly in the sand, because now it had left the desert road and was making straight for the zmala.
The Arab men on their Arab horses shouted as they rode, as if giving a signal; and from the tents, reddened now by the declining sun, came suddenly a strange crying in women's voices, shrill yet sweet; a sound that was half a chant, half an eerie yodeling, note after note of "you-you!—you-you!" Out from behind the zeribas, rough hedges of dead boughs and brambles which protected each low tent, burst a tidal wave of children, some gay as little bright butterflies in gorgeous dresses, others wrapped in brilliant rags. From under the tents women appeared, unveiled, and beautiful in the sunset light, with their heavy looped braids and their dangling, clanking silver jewellery. "You-you! you-you!" they cried, dark eyes gleaming, white teeth flashing. It was to be a festival for the douar, this fortunate evening of the son and heir's arrival, with a great lady of his house, and her friend, a Roumia girl. There was joy for everyone, for the Agha's relatives, and for each man, woman and child in the zmala, mighty ones, or humble members of the tribe, the Ouled-Serrin. There would be feasting, and after dark, to give pleasure to the Roumia, the men would make the powder speak. It was like a wedding; and best of all, an exciting rumour had gone round the douar, concerning the foreign girl and the Agha's son, Si Maïeddine.
The romance in Victoria's nature was stirred by her reception; by the white-clad riders on their slender horses, and the wild "you-yous" of the women and little girls. Maïeddine saw her excitement and thrilled to it. This was his great hour. All that had gone before had been leading up to this day, and to the days to come, when they would be in the fiery heart of the desert together, lost to all her friends whom he hated with a jealous hatred. He helped M'Barka to descend from the carriage: then, as she was received at the tent door by the Agha himself, Maïeddine forgot his self-restraint, and swung the girl down, with tingling hands that clasped her waist, as if at last she belonged to him.
Half fearful of what he had done, lest she should take alarm at his sudden change of manner, he studied her face anxiously as he set her feet to the ground. But there was no cause for uneasiness. So far from resenting the liberty he had taken after so many days of almost ostentatious respect, Victoria was not even thinking of him, and her indifference would have been a blow, if he had not been too greatly relieved to be hurt by it. She was looking at his father, the Agha, who seemed to her the embodiment of some biblical patriarch. All through her long desert journey, she had felt as if she had wandered into a dream of the Old Testament. There was nothing there more modern than "Bible days," as she said to herself, simply, except the French quarters in the few Arab towns through which they had passed.
Not yet, however, had she seen any figure as venerable as the Agha's, and she thought at once of Abraham at his tent door. Just such a man as this Abraham must have been in his old age. She could even imagine him ready to sacrifice a son, if he believed it to be the will of Allah; and Maïeddine became of more importance in her eyes because of his relationship to this kingly patriarch of the Sahara.
Having greeted his niece, Lella M'Barka, and passed her hospitably into the tent where women were dimly visible, the Agha turned to Maïeddine and Victoria.
"The blessing of Allah be upon thee, O my son," he said, "and upon thee, little daughter. My son's messenger brought word of thy coming, and thou art welcome as a silver shower of rain after a long drought in the desert. Be thou as a child of my house, while thou art in my tent."