Then upon the dry, warm sands he laid himself, his head toward Mecca, while overhead the reremouse circled and cried, its tiny shriek acknowledging its zest for life; and the rave of a jackal, resounding through the illuminated shade beyond, bespoke its desire to live also. Most musical of all music, the palm trees now answered the whispers of the night breeze with the softest tones of falling water. “It is done,” sighed Ibn Abdullah, as he lay and wearily rested. “Worthless I came, O Allah, and worthless I return. It is well.” VII TYPHOON Into a singularly restricted and indifferent environment Ida Zobel was born. Her mother, a severe, prim German woman, died when she was only three, leaving her to the care of her father and his sister, both extremely reserved and orderly persons. Later, after Ida had reached the age of ten, William Zobel took unto himself a second wife, who resembled Zobel and his first wife in their respect for labor and order. Both were at odds with the brash gayety and looseness of the American world in which they found themselves. Being narrow, sober, workaday Germans, they were annoyed by the groups of restless, seeking, eager, and as Zobel saw it, rather scandalous young men and women who paraded the neighborhood streets of an evening without a single thought apparently other than pleasure. And these young scamps and their girl friends who sped about in automobiles. The loose, indifferent parents. The loose, free ways of all these children. What was to become of such a nation? Were not the daily newspapers, which he would scarcely tolerate in his home longer, full of these wretched doings? The pictures of almost naked women that filled them all! Jazz! Petting parties! High school boys with flasks on their hips! Girls with skirts to their knees, rolled-down stockings, rolled-down neck-bands, bare arms, bobbed hair, no decent concealing underwear! “What—a daughter of his grow up like that! Be permitted to join in this prancing route to perdition! Never!” And in consequence, the strictest of rules with regard to Ida’s upbringing. Her hair was to grow its natural length, of course. Her lips and cheeks were never to know the blush of false, suggestive paint. Plain dresses. Plain underwear and stockings and shoes and hats. No crazy, idiotic finery, but substantial, respectable clothing. Work at home and, when not otherwise employed with her studies at school, in the small paint and color store which her father owned in the immediate vicinity of their home. And last, but not least, a schooling of such proper and definite character as would serve to keep her mind from the innumerable current follies which were apparently pulling at the foundations of decent society.