there seemed to rise more solemn ones. He heard the rolling of the organ in the cathedral in his native town, for he came from Rouen originally, where there is one of the most beautiful cathedrals in the world. The music rolled and rolled and passed over the desert's face. It seemed to lift his spirit and to cradle it. Then he breathed his prayers,—they took form, and in his sleep he repeated the Ave Maria and the Paternoster, and the words rolled and rolled over the desert's face and the supplication seemed to his feverish mind to mingle with the stars. 

 A sort of midnight dew fell upon him: so at least he thought, and it seemed to him a heavenly dew and to cover him like a benignant rain. He grew cooler. He prayed again, and with his words there came to the young man an ineffable sense of peace. He pillowed his fading thoughts upon it; he pillowed his aching mind upon it and his body, too, and the pain of his wound and he thought aloud, with only the night airs to hear him, in broken sentences: "If this is death it is not so bad. One should rather be afraid of life. This is not difficult, if I should ever get out of here I shall not regret this night." 

 Toward morning he grew calmer, he turned to speak to his little companion. In his troubled thoughts he had forgotten Pitchouné. 

 Sabron faintly called him. There was no response. Then the soldier listened in silence. It was absolutely unbroken. Not even the call of a night-bird—not even the cry of a hyena,—nothing came to him but the inarticulate voice of the desert. Great and solemn awe crept up to him, crept up to him like a spirit and sat down by his side. He felt his hands grow cold, and his feet grow cold. Now, unable to speak aloud, there passed through his mind that this, indeed, was death, desertion absolute in the heart of the plains. 

 CHAPTER XIV AN AMERICAN GIRL 

 The Marquise d'Esclignac saw that she had to reckon with an American girl. Those who know these girls know what their temper and mettle are, and that they are capable of the finest reverberations. 

 Julia Redmond was very young. Otherwise she would never have let Sabron go without one sign that she was not indifferent to him, and that she was rather bored with the idea of titles and fortunes. But she adored her aunt and saw, moreover, something else than ribbons and velvets in the make-up of the aunt. She saw deeper than the polish that a long Parisian lifetime had overlaid, and she loved what she saw. She respected her aunt, and knowing 

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