But the twenty-four hours was all of which she could
be certain; and even of them some must have flown by since the
carrier-pigeon had been loosed to her. She could not tell how long he
had to live.
There were fifty miles between her and her goal; Abd-el-Kader's horse
had once covered that space in three hours, so men of the Army of
D'Aumale had told her; she knew what they had done she could do. Once
only she paused, to let her horse lie a brief while, and cool his
foam-flecked sides, and crop some short, sweet grass that grew where
a cleft of water ran and made the bare earth green. She sat quite
motionless while he rested; she was keenly alive to all that could best
save his strength and further her travel; but she watched him during
those few minutes of rest and inaction with a fearful look of hunger in
her eyes--the worst hunger--that which craves Time and cannot seize it
fast enough. Then she mounted again, and again went on, on her flight.
She swept by cantonments, villages, soldiers on the march, douairs of
peaceful Arabs, strings of mules and camels, caravans of merchandise;
nothing arrested her; she saw nothing that she passed, as she rode over
the hard, dust-covered, shadowless roads; over the weary, sun-scorched,
monotonous country; over the land without verdure and without foliage,
the land that yet has so weird a beauty, so irresistible a fascination;
the land to which men, knowing that death waits for them in it, yet
return with as mad an infatuation as her lovers went back across the
waters to Circe.
Pages:
802
803
804
805
806
807
808
809
810
811
812
813
814
815
816
817
818
819
820
821
822
823
824
825
826