“She was married?”
“To the figure in the mirage; and she was content.”
“Content!” I cried.
“Content with her two little dark children dancing before her in the twilight, content when the figure of the mirage galloped at evening across the plain, shouting an Eastern love song, with a gazelle—instead of a woman—slung across his saddle-bow. Did I not say that, as the desert is the strangest thing in nature, so a woman is the strangest thing in human nature? Which heart is most mysterious?”
“Its heart?” I said.
“Or the heart of mademoiselle?”
“I give the palm to the latter.”
“And I,” he answered, taking off his wide-brimmed hat—“I gave it when I saluted her as madame before the tent door, out there in the great desert.”