Strange and very significant picture, that of this Turk forsaking his harem to converse with Lady Hester about the celestial constellations and to talk with her of unknown planets. Did it not seem to her that she was descending from one of those inaccessible stars! And what abyss can be more profound, what distance can be more immeasurable, than that which separates beings kneaded by centuries of civilisation from those in whom the barbarian still sleeps? He, who up to that time had regarded women under the different aspects of a desire unceasingly awakened and unceasingly satisfied, here is he learning in turn respect, admiration, deference, here is he beginning to catch a glimpse of the equality of the sexes and the parity of their complex intelligences! Little Giorgio, on his knees for four hours, was dead-sleepy. "He kept me until nearly ten o'clock," says the delighted Lady Hester, "an hour after the moment when everyone was obliged to remain in his house under pain of death (new decree of the pacha). All the doors were shut, but all opened for me, and they did not say a word to me." Lady Hester had, however, another object than that of initiating the Turks into the feminist evolution. She wished to go to Palmyra--Palmyra, the far-off and fabulous town which slept in the heart of the sands, guarded by the burning steppes, without water and without life. "The Syrian desert has only one Palmyra, as the sky has only one sun." Caprice of the tourist and of the woman, adventurous taste for unbeaten tracks? indifference to or even love of danger? latent recollection of Brothers and the prophet Pierre? desire to defy the English travellers who had failed on the journey to Tadmor? And perhaps, plan secret and slowly matured of regulating and of blending together the wandering tribes of the Bedouins, of intriguing with the sheiks, of unravelling again the political skein, a skein short, knotted and entangled with Arab politics? There are people who do not cease from imposing charity upon the poor; the needy--who cling to their life, dirty, laborious but independent, more than we think--are washed, scrubbed, brushed, nursed, taught, physicked, improved by force. Lady Hester was of the species--more rare happily--which is unable to see men scattered without wishing to group them, to liberate slaves by force and to reform the world. This instinct of domination, this thirst for authority, this imperialism, she was going to satisfy without delay upon the defenceless Arabs. And then the intercourse of a woman, of a queen, bound her. The ruins of Palmyra conjured up too faithfully the name of Zenobia!...