"Of course they do," Owen had answered, and Béclère's knowledge of himself propitiated Owen, who recognised a clever man in the remark, a man of many sympathies, though the exterior was prosaic. All the same Owen would have wished for some music in the evening, and for some musical assistance, for while waiting for the eagles to arrive he spent his time thinking how he might write the songs he heard every morning among the palm-trees; written down they did not seem nearly as original as they did on the lips, and Owen suspected his notation to be deficient. A more skilful musician would be able to get more of these rhythms on paper than he had been able to do, and he regretted his failures, for it would be interesting to bring home some copies of these songs just to show…
But he would never see her again, so what was the good of writing down these songs? What was the good of anything? A strange thing life is, and he paused to consider how the slightest event, the fact that he was unable to give complete expression on paper to an Arab rhythm, brought the old pain back again, and every pang of it. Even the society of Béclère was answerable for his suffering, and he thought how he must go away and travel again; only open solitude and wandering with rough men could still his pain; primitive Nature was the one balm…. That fellow Tahar—why did he delay? Owen thought of the eagles, the awful bird pursuing the fleeting deer, and himself riding in pursuit. This was the life that would cure him— how soon? In three months? in six? in ten years? It would be strange if he were to become a bedouin for love of her, and he walked on thinking how they had lain together one night listening to the silence, hearing nothing but an acacia moving outside their window. Béclère was coming towards him and the vision vanished.
"No news of Tahar yet?"
"No; you are forgetting that we are living in an oasis, where letters are not delivered, and where we bring news of ourselves, and where no news is understood to mean that the spring we were hastening towards was dry, or that a sand-storm—"
"Sand-storms are rare at this season of the year."
"An old bedouin like Tahar is safe enough. To-morrow or the day after… but I see you are impatient, you are growing tired of my company."
Owen assured Béclère he was mistaken, only a sedentary life was impossible to him, and he was anxious to be off again.
"So there is something of the wanderer in you, for no business calls you."
"No, my agent manages everything for me; it is, I suppose, mere restlessness." And Owen spoke of going in quest of Tahar.
"To pass him again in the desert," and they went towards the point where they might watch for Tahar, Béclère knowing by the sun the direction in which to look. There was no route, nothing in the empty space extending from their feet to the horizon—a line inscribed across the empty sky—nothing to be seen although the sun hung in the middle of the sky, the rays falling everywhere; it would have seemed that the smallest object should be visible, but this was not so—there was nothing. Even when he strained his eyes Owen could not distinguish which was sand, which was earth, which was stone, even the colour of the emptiness was undecided. Was it dun? Was it tawny? Striving to express himself, Owen could find nothing more explicit to say than that the colour of the desert was the colour of emptiness, and they sat down trying to talk of falconry. But it was impossible to talk in front of this trackless plain, cela coupe la parole, flowing away to the south, to the west, to the east, ending— it was impossible to imagine it ending anywhere, no more than we can imagine the ends of the sky; and the desert conveyed the same impression of loneliness—in a small way, of course—as the great darkness of the sky; "for the sky," Owen said, half to himself, half to his companion, "is dark and cold the moment one gets beyond the atmosphere of the earth."