The crowd walked on sand and for the most part with naked feet, so that if for a rare moment the sharp high cries and the perpetual voices ceased, the figures of men and women flitted by noiseless as ghosts.

And even at night, when the streets were most crowded and the uproar loudest, it seemed that underneath the noise, and almost appreciable to the ear, there lay a deep and brooding silence, the silence of deserts and the East.
"Durrance went down to Tewfikieh at ten o'clock that night," said Calder.

"I went to his quarters at eleven.

He had not returned.

He was starting eastward at four in the morning, and there was some detail of business on which I wished to speak to him before he went.