To the left were the huddled tents of their attendants. No sooner had the sun gone down than the Arabs commenced to sing—a song that Julia had especially liked.
"Love is like a sweet perfume,
It comes, it escapes.
When it's present, it intoxicates;
When it's a memory, it brings tears.
Love is like a sweet breath,
It comes and it escapes."
The weird music filled the silence of the silent place. It had the evanescent quality of the wind that brought the breath of the sand-flowers. The voices of the Arabs, not unmusical, though hoarse and appealing, cried out their love-song, and then the music turned to invocation and to prayer.
The two women listened silently as the night fell, their figures sharply outlined in the beautiful clarity of the eastern night.
Julia stood upright. In her severe riding-dress, she was as slender as a boy. She remained looking toward the horizon, immovable, patient, a silent watcher over the uncommunicative waste.
"Perhaps," she thought, "there is nothing really beyond that line, so fast blotting itself into night!—and yet I seem to see them come!"
Madame de la Maine, in the door of her tent, immovable, her hands clasped around her knees, looked affectionately at the young girl before her. Julia was a delight to her. She was carried away by her, by her frank simplicity, and drawn to her warm and generous heart. Madame de la Maine had her own story. She wondered whether ever, for any period of her conventional life, she could have thrown everything aside and stood out with the man she loved.
Julia, standing before her, a dark slim figure in the night—isolated and alone—recalled the figurehead of a ship, its face toward heaven, pioneering the open seas.
* * * * * * *
Julia watched, indeed. On the desert there is the brilliant day, a passionate glow, and the nightfall. They passed the nights sometimes listening for a cry that should hail an approaching caravan, sometimes hearing the wild cry of the hyenas, or of a passing vulture on his horrid flight. Otherwise, until the camp stirred with the dawn and the early prayer-call sounded "Allah! Allah! Akbar!" into the stillness, they were wrapped in complete silence.