Nothing but bare branches remained in the _nakhil_, or grove. Nothing at all was to be found in the few scrubby fields about the well now choked with masses of the insects. Whoever the people of this squalid settlement had been, all were gone. The place was almost as bare as if the sun's flames, themselves, had flared down and licked the village to dust and ashes. All the sufferers found, of any worth, was a few handfuls of dry dates in one of the hovels and a water-jar with about two quarts of brackish water. This water the Master discovered, groping half blind through the hut. Stale as it was, it far surpassed the strongly chemicalized water of the River of Night, still remaining in the goat-skin. It smote him with the most horrible temptation of his life. All the animal in his nature, every parched atom of his body shouted. "Take it! Drink, drink your fill! She will never know. Take it, and drink!" He seized the water-jar, indeed, but only to carry it with shaking hands to her, where she lay in the welcome shadow of the hut. His lips were black with thirst as he raised her head and cried to her: "Here is water--real water! Drink!" She obeyed, hardly more than half conscious. He gave her all he dared to have her drink at once, nearly half. Then he set down the jar, loosened the sack from his shoulders which were cut raw with the chafing of the thongs, and bathed her face with a little of that other water which, though bad, still might keep life in them. "This may be an insane waste," he was thinking, "but it will help revive her. And--maybe--we shall find another, better oasis." Out across the plain he peered, over the sun-dried earth, out into the distances shrouded with purple mists. His blurred eyes narrowed. "Why, my God! There's one, now!" he muttered. "A green one--cool--fresh--" The Master laid the woman down again in the shadow, got up and staggered out into the blinding sun. He tottered forward, laughing hoarsely. "Cool--_fresh_--" The words came from between parched lips. All at once the oasis faded to a blur in the brilliant tapestry of the desert that beckoned: "Come to me--and die!" The Master recoiled, hands over eyes, mouthing unintelligible words. Back beside the woman he crouched, fighting his own soul to keep it from madness. Then he heard her voice, weak, strange: "Have you drunk, too?" "Of course!" "You are not--telling me the truth." "So help me God!" His fevered lips could hardly form the words. "There, in the hut--I drank. All I needed." She grew silent. His conscience lapsed. They lay as if dead, till almost evening, under the shelter of the blessed shadow. The rest, even in that desolation, put fresh life into them. At nightfall they bound up their feet again, ate the dry dates and again set their blistered faces toward the Red Sea.