"O, Queen, if we don't start soon we are sure to miss perhaps some of the most select outgoing caravans. By the fringe of the Prophet--but we surely will!" "The noise you are now making is entirely different," commented Verbeena. She arose and clicked her fingers over her left shoulder, a trick she had learned from a French officer from Alabama while trilling the cubes. "Let's go!" * * * * * At last she was out on the desert on her very own! Out on the desert with her wild heart, her strangely stirring impulses, her uncharted passions, the mad caprices of her swift reactions from pants to skirts, from skirts to pants, though nothing like vice-versa had even touched her. Free--_free_--FREE! Of everything but Musty Ale, sixty-two mounted Sahara Siwashes at 9 centimes a day, eight exquisitely fragrant camels, the bright, tangible odor of garlic from the broiling meats of the camp fire and her faithful aura of mauve fag smoke wreathing her pruned, red locks, an aura that was kept going by the plumes which ever shot from the wide flanges of her flaming nostrils in symbolism of the fire seething beneath the icicles draping her ruby heart. As a boy she was interesting. But as a girl--Time would tell, for Time is no gentleman. She thought of her purity and dug the spurs viciously into her indignant horse. She remembered Bertie Butternut without a qualm. When his arms had been about her it had stirred no instinct in her but that to fight back. She perfectly understood that as to love and its languors, its high spots, its dumps, she was a mere unbaked bun. She realized that she knew nothing of the other sex beyond the men's underclothing advertisements. And they had never impressed her. She had better muscles herself than any the artists seemed able to draw. Indeed, were these the pictures of men? She remembered the sums she had received from time to time to pose for posters of young gentlemen wearing new style collars. "Pooey!" exclaimed Verbeena. And lit her 18,462nd pill or cigarette. But these Arabs! Ah, there was something to them! She felt that they had something more than bridge-whist, golf and billiards under their turbans, something more than mere hop-Scotches of the heart. They smoked as many cigarettes as herself--nearly. They glowered like devils and jammed their horses around and kicked the camels about with a refreshing brutality. They scratched themselves so fearlessly! They breathed garlic gloriously! And they sang--always. And always the same tune to the _simp-simp-simp_ of their two string ukeleles with the palm twig picks. It was beautiful to Verbeena that same, same tune, grateful to her ear that liquid, languorous _simp-simp-simp_, an ear as exquisitely tone deaf as that of any good, up-to-date composer. Then suddenly black specks danced before her eyes! Was it liver? No! By Jove, it was a caravan on the horizon of the jolly old Sahara!