Desert Love

Jill had finished the first of many evening meals she was to partake of in the desert, and was lying on a heap of cushions listening to the clink of brass coffee utensils and po...

Jill's memory being of the kind which retains only the pleasant word and act, the disagreeable episode of the afternoon had completely evacuated that cell which in one second ca...

Each dawn, if they had travelled in the night, they found their tents pitched; each night they moved on, or not, as pleased the girl's mood, each hour of the day strengthening t...

Some months had gone, and the sun sparkled on the water of the little singing stream, though bitter winds had blown and all-enveloping sand had swirled about the palms which sur...

Little by little the face of the desert began to change, just as changes the face of a fainted woman, which, drawn and grey and pinched about the mouth, starts to relax and fill...

The sun in a great red-gold ball was slipping behind the sharp edge of sand which like a steel wire marked the far horizon, the sky resembling some gorgeous Eastern mantle stret...

Few have or ever will make use of the route which the Arab was explaining by means of a sharp stick and a flat stretch of sand. And in truth 'twere wise to leave it to those who...

I am sure that those who read the following and know the East will say that I exaggerate, that under no circumstances or stress of emotion would an Arab so treat a camel, especi...

Inexpressibly weary was she, exhausted to the point of fainting, for in spite of numerous haltings, the drinking of tea, coffee, and sherbet, and the eating of cakes and curious...

Arabs as a race are tall, most of them having a grave look of nobility, all without exception, inheriting from their forefathers Ishmail or Johtan that air of studied calm, that...

And so it was now as she sat under the African moon, whilst little rings and puffs of smoke helped to irritate the insects ensconced in the leaves of the creeper. She seemed to...

Beautiful her many rooms had been, but none to compare with the snow-white beauty of this. Great white Persian rugs with faint tracings worked in gold and silver lay upon the wh...

By degrees Jill had become accustomed to the habits of the East, sleeping peacefully upon the cushion-laden perfumed divan, sitting upon cushions beside the snow-white napery sp...

Then she half opened her eyes again, stretched out her hand to pull uncomprehendingly at the white netting round her bed, through which she could see a blaze of red, gold, and p...

Jill had an entrancing speaking voice. She spoke on a low note, and having trained the muscles of the throat to relax or tighten at will, she was able to throw all manner of inf...

The Rolls Royce containing representatives of the Savoy and Shepherds in the shapes of beautifully gowned, handsome, placid, somewhat dull, the Honourable Mary Bingham, pronounc...

"An especially delicious coffee had to be prepared for Mademoiselle, and strict orders given that we were not to be disturbed until I give the signal. Also that this quarter of...

Very simple and harmless they looked too, the taller one in spotless galabeah and red fez, his smallpox pitted face softened by the light of the dying moon; the other, a mere bu...

It seems wellnigh impossible that an English maid could look with such equanimity upon the prospect of marriage with a man, an Eastern, of whom she knew nothing outside the tale...

A striking and unrealistic picture the two made as they lay on their cushions alone in the desert. The girl in her white dress, which in truth was somewhat crumpled, her white n...

Out on to the balcony and back, this way, that way, to and fro, paced Jill in her black room. Black skins lay upon the black marble floor, black satin cushions upon the skins. C...

It was a very beautiful girl who stood by the fire listening to the intense silence which precedes the dawn. The golden shimmering garment fell from her shoulders in soft folds,...

A sharp word of command and the pack-camel rose, moved a few paces on its noiseless feet, swaying from side to side as though to readjust its load, whisked its miserable tail, a...

It was with a feeling of exultation that Jill, from her elevated seat, looked down into the Arab's face, outlined in the scented dimness of the garden by the snow-white head-clo...

La Belle, a rank cross-breed of Tunisian and French with a dash of Arabian, was the one good part of a bad debt which had overwhelmed Achmed when he had inadvertently over-reach...

The distant and never-ceasing shuffling of slippered or naked feet on stone, or sand, made a dull accompaniment to the sharper notes of men's voices crying their wares of sticky...

The love-song broke the stillness of the desert night with the suddenness and sweetness of the nightingale's call in the depths of an English garden, laden with the perfume of J...

Crowned and uncrowned queens travel in comfort all the world over, a comfort of over-heated special trains, the most stable part of the boat, the most skilful chauffeur, allied...

And just as the dead cheetah was laid at Jill's feet, a huge bull dog, with a face like a gargoyle to be seen on the Western transept of Notre-Dame, and a chest like a steel saf...

The palms swayed slightly in a faint breeze, the sand stretched a restful grey, and there was no sound whatever save the faint ripple of the life-giving stream singing its way t...

The silver shafts of the full moon struck down into the ruined outer courts of the Temple of Khafra, turning the rose-colour of the granite to a dull terra-cotta, and picking ou...

Having just wrested a promise from Hahmed that he would take her one moonlight night to the summit of the Great Pyramid, in spite of the strict rules against such nightly excurs...

"Doubtless my beloved sleeps!" thought Hahmed the Arab, as he looked at the watch on his wrist to find it pointing to midnight, and clapped his hands for fresh coffee, then lit...

Personally I consider as infinitely boring those descriptions written at length anent the past lives of the characters, male and female, which go to the building of a novel, so...

And the full force of the storm crashed about Jill's defenceless head at the midday hour also of the same day, when she ought to have been searching the coolness of her midday s...

Whereupon the woman of the shadows, turning towards that which had once been an altar, and raising her arms straight above her head with hands out-turned at an acute angle, thri...

At her feet sat huddled groups of women, just bundles of black robes, some with discs about their necks, some with chains or golden crescents upon the forehead, all wearing the...

The midday sun of the same day blazed down upon a picture which for ghastliness surpassed even the horrors painted by the madman Werth, which, if your mind is steeped in morbidn...

Jill, the girl who only a few moons back had taken the reins of her life into her own hands, and had tangled them into a knot which her henna-tipped fingers seemed unable to unr...

The day following the native woman's surreptitious visit to the great Arab saw Jill and Mary and Jack, followed discreetly by the same native woman, set sail at an early, gay an...

To natives, a dressed or undressed dancer is nothing more than a plaything, or something to help pass the hour; he will look at and criticise her with much less enthusiasm than...

Night with her blessed wind had come at last, which means coolness for a space beneath the stars, and oblivion for a while in sleep for those who have untroubled heart and good...

This is no riddle, the answer being too easy. Men would have answered, "Guessed in once, she was pretty!" And the women would guess in once too, but would keep silent, the prett...

Jill, very fair indeed to look upon, and with seven-and-sixpence in odd money in her bag, stepped out bravely on to the road, scorched by the midday sun, with a curl at the corn...

Decked out in Mary's trappings Jill lay on the couch, her pale face shining like an evening flower, whilst she passed the brush over and over again through the burnished strands...

All our lives we all chase wraiths in the moonshine! Be the wraiths the outcome of proximity in the garden under the silvery moon rays, which so often snap the trap about our un...

Mary and Jack, Lady Bingham, Diana Lytham and Sir Timothy and Lady Sarah, had started that morning for England in the great liner which Jill had watched unconcernedly until it d...

In the middle of the courtyard two Eastern women in the domestic act of disembowelling a kid looked up lazily, and one smiling, pointed to the upper storey of the house, through...

With short steps the native woman shuffled quickly along the outside of the wall surrounding the house of Hahmed the Arab, stopping in front of the great gates, which were close...

Days and nights passed, and still more days and nights, in which the man, bound from head to foot in soft wrappings soaked in unguents, tossed and raved, screaming for water, te...

An hour and more had passed before Jack Wetherbourne suddenly awoke, and stretching his arms above his head apostrophised the full moon shining down upon the Great Pyramid in th...

Jill had been married a fortnight. Everything down to the minutest detail had passed off perfectly, everything had been duly signed and sealed and conducted in the most orthodox...

You have only to stare long enough at it to get the image of some distinct object imprinted upon your retina, then you need but stare again at some space of indistinct colouring...