She saw low,
scattered tents, far-off columns of smoke rising. She saw a bird pass
across the blue and vanish towards the mountains. Black shapes appeared
among the tiny mounds of earth, crowned with dusty grass and dwarf
tamarisk bushes. She saw them move, like objects in a dream, slowly
through the shimmering gold. They were feeding camels, guarded by nomads
whom she could not see.
At first she persistently explored the distances, carried forcibly by an
_elan_ of her whole nature to the remotest points her eyes could reach.
Then she withdrew her gaze gradually, reluctantly, from the hidden
summoning lands, whose verges she had with difficulty gained, and
looked, at first with apprehension, upon the nearer regions. But her
apprehension died when she found that the desert transmutes what is
close as well as what is remote, suffuses even that which the hand
could almost touch with wonder, beauty, and the deepest, most strange
significance.
Quite near in the river bed she saw an Arab riding towards the desert
upon a prancing black horse. He mounted a steep bit of path and came out
on the flat ground at the cliff top.
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