“—and flashed a smile at her with his white teeth. It was his last day in the service. He was in grand spirits. ‘_Mon Dieu! Mais quelles dents!_’ she sang out. Her people laughed at her. The Spahi looked at her again—not smiling. She shrank back on the balcony. Then his place was taken by the Governor—small imperial, _chapeau de forme_, evening dress, landau and pair. Mademoiselle was _désolée_. Why couldn’t civilised men look like Spahis? Why were all Parisians commonplace? Why—why? Her sister and brother-in-law called her the savage worshipper, and took her down to the café on the terrace to dine. And all through dinner mademoiselle talked of the _beaux_ Spahis—in the plural, with a secret reservation in her heart. After Algiers our Parisians went by way of Constantine to Biskra. Now they saw desert for the first time—the curious iron-grey, velvety-brown, and rose-pink mountains; the nomadic Arabs camping in their earth-coloured tents patched with rags; the camels against the skyline; the everlasting sands, broken here and there by the deep green shadows of distant oases, where the close-growing palms, seen from far off, give to the desert almost the effect that clouds give to Cornish waters. At Biskra mademoiselle—oh! what she must have looked like under the mimosa-trees before the Hôtel de l’Oasis!⸺” “Then you’ve seen her,” I began. “—mademoiselle became enthusiastic again, and, almost before they knew it, her sister and brother-in-law were committed to a desert expedition, were fitted out with a dragoman, tents, mules—the whole show, in fact—and one blazing hot day found themselves out in that sunshine—you know it—with Biskra a green shadow on that sea, the mountains behind the sulphur springs turning from bronze to black-brown in the distance, and the table flatness of the desert stretching ahead of them to the limits of the world and the judgment day.” My companion paused, took a flaming reed from the fire, put it to his pipe bowl, pulled hard at his pipe—all the time staring straight before him, as if, among the glowing logs, he saw the caravan of the Parisians winding onward across the desert sands. Then he turned to me, sighed, and said: “You’ve seen mirage?” “Yes,” I answered. “Have you noticed that in mirage the things one fancies one sees generally appear in large numbers—buildings crowded as in towns, trees growing together as in woods, men shoulder to shoulder in large companies?” My experience of mirage in the desert was so, and I acknowledged it. “Have you ever seen in a mirage a solitary figure?” he continued. I thought for a moment. Then I replied in the negative.