"Beautiful?" she repeated slowly, reflectively, "am I? The white camel that lives down by the market square is beautiful, and so was the Mahdi's tomb."
"Well, you are more beautiful even than the white camel or the Mahdi's tomb," returned Stanhope, laughing. "And what do you think of me?" he added curiously. "Where do I come in the list? somewhere close after the white camel, I hope."
Then, as she gazed at him steadfastly, without replying at all, he felt rather piqued, and took off his blue glasses and squared his fine shoulders against the rock.
"Oh, you!" said the girl softly at last, "You are like nothing on earth, lord! You are like the sun when he first comes over the plain, or the moon at night, when it floats, white and shining, through the blue spaces!"
She sat sedately still, but her breast heaved under the straight, white tunic: her eyes were full of soft fire: her voice was low, and quivered with enthusiasm. Stanhope flushed scarlet. Confused and startled, he stared into her eyes, and so they sat, silent, gazing at each other.
That same afternoon there was a big fair or bazaar in the trampled mud square in the centre of the Soudanese village that lies higher up the river at the back of Khartoum. The place was gay with colour and crowded with moving figures. From long distances, from far-off villages down and up the river, the natives had come in, either to sell or to buy along the wide, dusty road that went out from either side of the square, leading each way north and south. The mud-huts stood all round the square, backed by some date-palms, for Khartoum and the village behind it are more favoured with shade than sun-baked Omdurman. And in the centre of the square stood or sat the natives, buying and selling, chaffering and gesticulating. Some were Bishareens, with straight forms and features, and black bodies almost covered with long strings and chains of beads. They stood about gracefully to be admired, with their wooly hair fluffed out at right angles to their head, for the occasion. Some were corn-merchants, sitting leisurely before a heap of golden grain piled up loosely on the ground. Others stood by patiently with their fowls or goats or camels, feeding them with green fodder; and others had vivid scarlet rugs and carpets of native make spread out on the uneven ground. And all day long the noise of the merchants, and the cry of the fowls, and the groan of the camels, and the dust of the square, and the smoke of the cooking fires went up from the bazaar.
In one corner of it, on a square of blue carpet, spread beneath his camel's nose, sat a merchant who had been observed to come early to the fair. He appeared to be a man of some substance, for he was clothed, and the camel kneeling beside him was fat and sleek, and would easily make two of the thin camels of Khartoum. Opposite him, sitting on his heels and holding out two lean hands to tend the small fire that smoked between them, was another, obviously poorer, from his smaller amount of dress and flesh.
"It is true: your Merla is the pearl of the desert. I have heard it from my mother," observed the merchant reflectively. "Still, think, my brother, a good riding camel that can be hired out to the Englishmen every day for thirty piastres the day; in a short time you will feed on goat's flesh, and wear boots, with all that money."
The black eyes of the listener sparkled, but he objected shrewdly enough.