Sometimes the green zone of the uplands was lost in a blur not of heat, but of fever. Sharp pains stabbed her temples, and, when the dream became distinct again, she saw black men walking like giants, their heads in the white-hot sky. But just as she had conquered fear, so, by a supreme resolution, she conquered her vertigo, the burning of her emaciated limbs, the quaking of her body which a moment before had been bathed in moisture. At sunset she descended from the machilla to give Hamoud a look of astonishment, while replying:
"No, I am well."
Yet she cast a look of dread at the rising tent, thinking of the hours of sleeplessness, of appalling thoughts on the borderline between nightmares and flashes of fever.
Now and then, as she escaped shivering from the hot bath, she lost hold of her new strength.
"If you knew!" she whimpered.
The lost, safe life rose before her. She saw against the green tent walls the painting by Bronzino, the jeweled perspective of Fifth Avenue at night, Fanny Brassfield's necklace sparkling in the blaze of the opera house. The music of waltzes mingled with the strains of David's tone poem; and she smelled at the same time the tanbark of the horse show, the pastilles at Brantome's, and the flowers surrounding the marble warrior and the marble nymph. She was seized with panic, on realizing the remoteness of security.
"Where am I? Africa! But why?"
She stood motionless, aghast at her inability to remember why she was here.
Hamoud's voice came to her from beyond the curtain:
"There is going to be a shauri, a talk with these porters of yours."