Chapter 6

The promised send-off had been enthusiastic. The arrangements for the trip had been perfect; there had been no hitch anywhere. The guide, Akatsuchi, appeared capable and efficient,making himself indistinct when not wanted and replying with courteous dignity when spoken to. The day had been full of interest, and the long, hot ride had for Hana been the height of physical enjoyment. They had reached the oasis where the first night was to be passed an hour before, and found the camp already established, tents pitched, and everything so ordered that Sir Kiba could find nothing to criticise; even Udon, his attendant, who had travelled with him since Hana was a baby, and who was as critical as his master on the subject of camps, had no fault to find.

Hana glanced about her little travelling tent with complete content. It was much smaller than the ones to which she had always been accustomed, ridiculously so compared with the large one she had had in Water Country the previous year, with its separate bath—and dressing-rooms; and with swarming attendants, too. Here the service promised is a little inadequate, but it had been on her whim to dispense an elaborate arrangements for this tour that Sir Kiba tried comparatively into significantly roughing it. The narrow camp cot, the tin bath, the little folding table and her two suit-cases seemed to take up all the available space. But she laughed at the inconvenience, though she had drenched her bed with splashing, and the soap had found its way into the toe of one of her long boots. She had changed from her riding clothes into a dress of clinging jade-green silk, swinging short above her slender ankles, the neck cut low, revealing the gleaming white of her soft, girlish bosom. She came out of the tent and stood a moment exchanging an amused smile with Udon, who was hovering near dubiously, one eye on her and the other on his master. She was late, and Sir Kiba liked his meals on time. He was lounging in one deck-chair with his feet on another.

Hana wagged a forefinger with an expression of warning. "Fly, Udon, and fetch the soup! If it is cold there will be a riot." She walked to the edge of the canvas cloth that had been thrown down in front of the tents and stood taking intense pleasure in the scene around her, her eyes dancing with excitement as they glanced slowly around the camp spread out over the oasis—the clustering palm trees, the desert itself stretching away before her in a waving appearnce, but seemingly level in the evening light, far off to the distant hills lying like a dark smudge against the horizon. She drew a long breath. It was the desert at last, the desert that she felt she had been longing for all her life. She had never known until this moment how intense the longing had been. She felt strangely at home, as if the great, silent emptiness had been waiting for her as she had been waiting for it, and now that she had come it was welcoming her softly with the faint rustle of the whispering sand, the mysterious charm of its billowy, shifting surface that seemed beckoning to her to penetrate further and further into its unknown mystery.