been wiser to choose another place for the flaunting of their tawdry insignificance. Any minute this Wilderness, 'huddled in grey annihilation,' might awake and notice them … !
In his own hotel were several 'smart,' so-called 'Society' people who emphasised the protest in him to the point of definite contempt. Overdressed, the latest worldly novel under their arms, they strutted the narrow pavements of their tiny world, immensely pleased with themselves. Their vacuous minds expressed themselves in the slang of their exclusive circle—value being the element excluded. The pettiness of their outlook hardly distressed him—he was too familiar with it at home—but their essential vulgarity, their innate ugliness, seemed more than usually offensive in the grandeur of its present setting. Into the mighty sands they took the latest London scandal, gabbling it over even among the Tombs and Temples. And 'it was to laugh,' the pains they spent wondering whom they might condescend to know, never dreaming that they themselves were not worth knowing. Against the background of the noble Desert their titles seemed the cap and bells of clowns.
And Henriot, knowing some of them personally, could not always escape their insipid company. Yet he was the gainer. They little guessed how their commonness heightened contrast, set mercilessly thus beside the strange, eternal beauty of the sand.
Occasionally the protest in his soul betrayed itself in words, which of course they did not understand. 'He is so clever, isn't he?' And then, having relieved his feelings, he would comfort himself characteristically:
'The Desert has not noticed them. The Sand is
