trace of anger, only a great pity for the poor soul-blind woman of the desert who laughed in the face of God.
"Mes'oodeh," he said, and his voice was so faint, it sounded like the echo of a dream, "the Arabs say that the desert is the Garden of God, that in the desert is heard the Voice of God—Silence. . . I am dying, my fingers are growing cold. . . You often declared that the desert was empty, that it was filled only by our own creations, the things which we bring into it ourselves. . . But you were blind; you could not see, you could not understand."
A great Light came into his eyes as he spoke, and—it is hard to explain—somehow the light seemed to reflect into the eyes of Mes'oodeh, bringing her Vision at last. Slowly her head slipped down to the sand. "Mercy! O God!" she cried. "Mercy!"
But even as she prayed and moaned and pleaded, the soul of Andrea Giovanni slipped from his body, away off there in the Garden of God. And Mes'oodeh, the desert woman, prayed, prayed as she had never prayed before in her life. Softly the shadows of evening slipped down over the desert. A cool breeze rose sadly from the south and brushed against her cheek like the softest caress. And Mes'oodeh knelt there alone in the desert by the body of the young priest. All about her on every side stretched a limitless plain of utter desolation. Nothing but a glorious faith in God remained to her, a faith made doubly beautiful by the fact that it had grown up in a soul that had once been a region of doubt. The miracle of love had been performed anew. It left Mes'oodeh a broken woman; but it left her a good woman. Thus did love come to Mes'oodeh, the soulless woman of the desert, crushing her beneath the terrible weight of its sadness, for love and sorrow are closely akin. Slowly she raised her eyes, dim with tears, toward the heavens, and a look of exquisite peace stole over her face as she beheld the glorious light of the Southern Cross lifting slantwise into the sky.
At Bad-el-Lani, a little desert-town far to the south of Wadi-el-Gibli, near the Soudan, they tell of a strange veiled woman who goes about among the sick and the dying, shrouded in white. No one knows the name of this woman of mystery. The crippled beggars of Bab-el-Lani call her the White Mother of the Desert. And every night she creeps to the heights of the city and looks wistfully out over the desert toward Tripoli. Sometimes it seems as though she whispers a single name, "Andrea, Andrea, Andrea."
Back at Wadi-el-Gibli, the people wonder what has become of Mes'oodeh, the soulless woman of the desert. Some say that perhaps she has gone to some other town more abundant in riches than Wadi-el-Gibli. But always, Doctor Ripley, the American missionary, shakes his head.
"Perhaps," he says, "she has heard the Voice of God out in the desert and has been born anew."
"Such women," declared Lacroix, the French importer, "can never reform."
"You forget the Magdalene" replied Doctor Ripley softly, and he gazed thoughtfully out over the desert.
Now the New Year reviving old Desires,
The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires,
Where the White Hand of Moses on the Bough
Puts out, and Jesus from the ground suspires.
