"Thou wouldst not say so, if thou hadst ever loved. Nothing is sad to a lover, except to lose his love, or not to have his love returned."
"But an Arab girl has no chance to love," Victoria argued. "Her father gives her to a man when she is a child, and they have never even spoken to each other until after the wedding."
"We of the younger generation do not like these child marriages," Maïeddine apologized, eagerly. "And, in any case, an Arab man, unless he be useless as a mule without an eye, knows how to make a girl love him in spite of herself. We are not like the men of Europe, bound down by a thousand conventions. Besides, we sometimes fall in love with women not of our own race. These we teach to love us before marriage."
Victoria laughed again, for she felt light-hearted in the beautiful morning. "Do Arab men always succeed as teachers?"
"What is written is written," he answered slowly. "Yet it is written that a strong man carves his own fate. And for thyself, wouldst thou know what awaits thee in the future?"
"I trust in God and my star."
"Thou wouldst not, then, that the desert speak to thee with its tongue of sand out of the wisdom of all ages?"
"What dost thou mean?"
"I mean that my cousin, Lella M'Barka, can divine the future from the sand of the Sahara, which gave her life, and life to her ancestors for a thousand years before her. It is a gift. Wilt thou that she exercise it for thee to-night, when we camp?"
"There is hardly any real sand in this part of the desert," said Victoria, seeking some excuse not to hear M'Barka's prophecies, yet not to hurt M'Barka's feelings, or Maïeddine's. "It is all far away, where we see the hills which look golden as ripe grain. And we cannot reach those hills by evening."