Everywhere in the oasis it came with a lust to kill, but surely its deepest enmity was concentrated upon the Catholic Church.

There, despite the tempest, people were huddled, drawn together not so much by the ceremony that was to take place within as by the desire to see the departure of an unusual caravan.  In every desert centre news is propagated with a rapidity seldom equalled in the home of civilisation.  It runs from mouth to mouth like fire along straw.  And Batouch, in his glory, had not been slow to speak of the wonders prepared under his superintendence to make complete the desert journey of his mistress and Androvsky.  The main part of the camp had already gone forward, and must have reached Arba, the first halting stage outside Beni-Mora; tents, the horses for the Roumis, the mules to carry necessary baggage, the cooking utensils and the guard dogs.  But the Roumis themselves were to depart from the church on camel-back directly the marriage was accomplished.  Domini, who had a native hatred of everything that savoured of ostentation, had wished for a tiny expedition, and would gladly have gone out into the desert with but one tent, Batouch and a servant to do the cooking.  But the journey was to be long and indefinite, an aimless wandering through the land of liberty towards the south, without fixed purpose or time of returning.  She knew nothing of what was necessary for such a journey, and tired of ceaseless argument, and too much occupied with joy to burden herself with detail, at last let Batouch have his way.

“I leave it to you, Batouch,” she said.  “But, remember, as few people and beasts as possible.  And as you say we must have camels for certain parts of the journey, we will travel the first stage on camel-back.”

Consciously she helped to fulfil the prediction of the Diviner, and then she left Batouch free.

Now outside the church, shrouded closely in hoods and haiks, grey and brown bundles with staring eyes, the desert men were huddled against the church wall in the wind.  Hadj was there, and Smain, sheltering in his burnous roses from Count Anteoni’s garden.  Larbi had come with his flute and the perfume-seller from his black bazaar.  For Domini had bought perfumes from him on her last day in Beni-Mora.  Most of Count Anteoni’s gardeners had assembled.  They looked upon the Roumi lady, who rode magnificently, but who could dream as they dreamed, too, as a friend.  Had she not haunted the alleys where they worked and idled till they had learned to expect her, and to miss her when she did not come?  And with those whom Domini knew were assembled their friends, and their friends’ friends, men of Beni-Mora, men from the near oasis, and also many of those desert wanderers who drift in daily out of the sands to the centres of buying and selling, barter their goods for the goods of the South, or sell their loads of dates for money, and, having enjoyed the dissipation of the cafes and of the dancing-houses, drift away again into the pathless wastes which are their home.