With great effort he raised himself on his arm and scanned the desert stretching on all sides like a rosy sea. Along the river bank the pale and delicate blossom and leaf of the mimosa lay like a bluish veil, and the smell of the evening and the smell of the mimosa flower and the perfumes of the weeds came to him, aromatic and sweet. Above his head the blue sky was ablaze with stars and directly over him the evening star hung like a crystal lamp. But there was no beauty in it for the wounded officer who looked in vain to the dark shadows on the desert that might mean approaching human life. It would be better to die as he was dying, than to be found by the enemy! The sea of waste rolled unbroken as far as his fading eyes could reach. He sank back with a sigh, not to rise again, and closed his eyes and waited. He slept a short, restless, feverish sleep, and in it dreams chased one another like those evoked by a narcotic, but out of them, over and over again came the picture of Julia Redmond, and she sang to him the song whose words were a prayer for the safety of a loved one during the night. From that romantic melody 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.