In the companionship of the American girl, Thérèse de la Maine had thrown off restraint. If the Marquise d'Esclignac had felt Julia's influence, Thérèse de la Maine, being near her own age, echoed Julia's very feeling. Except for their dragoman and their servants, the two women were alone in the desert. Smiling at Julia, Madame de la Maine said: "I haven't been so far from the Rue de la Paix in my life." "How can you speak of the Rue de la Paix, Thérèse?" "Only to show you how completely I have left it behind." Julia's eyes were fixed upon the limitless sands, a sea where a faint line lost itself in the red west and the horizon shut from her sight everything that she believed to be her life. "This is the seventh day, Thérèse!" "Already you are as brown as an Arab, Julia!" "You as well, _ma chère amie_!" "Robert does not like dark women," said the Comtesse de la Maine, and rubbed her cheek. "I must wear two veils." "Look, Thérèse!" Across the face of the desert the glow began to withdraw its curtain. The sands suffused an ineffable hue, a shell-like pink took possession, and the desert melted and then grew colder--it waned before their eyes, withered like a tea-rose. "Like a rose!" Julia murmured, "smell its perfume!" She lifted her head, drinking in with delight the fragrance of the sands. "_Ma chère_ Julia," gently protested the comtesse, lifting her head, "perfume, Julia!" But she breathed with her friend, while a sweetly subtle, intoxicating odor, as of millions and millions of roses, gathered, warmed, kept, then scattered on the airs of heaven, intoxicating her. To the left were the huddled tents of their attendants. No sooner had the sun gone down than the Arabs commenced to sing--a song that Julia had especially liked. "Love is like a sweet perfume, It comes, it escapes. When it's present, it intoxicates; When it's a memory, it brings tears. Love is like a sweet breath, It comes and it escapes." The weird music filled the silence of the silent place. It had the evanescent quality of the wind that brought the breath of the sand-flowers. The voices of the Arabs, not unmusical, though hoarse and appealing, cried out their love-song, and then the music turned to invocation and to prayer. The two women listened silently as the night fell, their figures sharply outlined in the beautiful clarity of the eastern night. Julia stood upright. In her severe riding-dress, she was as slender as a boy. She remained looking toward the horizon, immovable, patient, a silent watcher over the uncommunicative waste. "Perhaps," she thought, "there is nothing really beyond that line, so fast blotting itself into night!--and yet I seem to see them come!"