Diana wagged an admonishing forefinger. "Fly, Stephens, and fetch the
soup! If it is cold there will be a riot." She walked to the edge of
the canvas cloth that had been thrown down in front of the tents and
stood revelling in the scene around her, her eyes dancing with
excitement as they glanced slowly around the camp spread out over the
oasis--the clustering palm trees, the desert itself stretching away
before her in undulating sweeps, but seemingly level in the evening
light, far off to the distant hills lying like a dark smudge against
the horizon. She drew a long breath. It was the desert at last, the
desert that she felt she had been longing for all her life. She had
never known until this moment how intense the longing had been. She
felt strangely at home, as if the great, silent emptiness had been
waiting for her as she had been waiting for it, and now that she had
come it was welcoming her softly with the faint rustle of the
whispering sand, the mysterious charm of its billowy, shifting surface
that seemed beckoning to her to penetrate further and further into its
unknown obscurities.

Her brother's voice behind her brought her down to earth suddenly.
"You've been a confounded long time."

She turned to the table with a faint smile. "Don't be a bear, Aubrey.
It's all very well for you. You have Stephens to lather your chin and
to wash your hands, but thanks to that idiot Marie, I have to look
after myself."