The artist's brush rises and falls, drawing lines here and touches there, while his voice repeats, in clear, deep tones, those proud verses — he repeats certain lines of poetry without much awareness of it, repeat-ing them because their music pleases him and because there is in them something of this scene he is painting before him.

And how much the artist needs to come to know the spirit of what he paints; for if he is skill-ful, he paints by the inspiration of his heart before he paints by the inspiration of his brush. The artist's hand made one last round over that oil painting — a round by which the artist meant to breathe life into the picture; he meant to make it speak; he meant to... And a glance of his fell toward the edge of the carpet, where his child sat gazing up at him, watching his every motion and stillness with wide, dark eyes. Father, said the child, what is this you are painting? It is the desert, my son, said the artist — the drowsy desert waking with the break of dawn. Look — here are the palm trees rising into the wide open air, receiving the light of the sun in all tranquility and peace; here are the tents of the Bedouin scattered over these yellow sands, with the Bedouin standing around them greeting the rising of the light and the source of life; and those camels — look at them, my son — they are the very image of patience and the emblem of meekness; they are making

ready to bear the loads and to carry them and their masters into the empty, unknown wastes — and these sheep graze on what fresh herbage remains upon the ground, and listen to the murmur of the water of the channel welling from a hollow in the barren desert — look — look!

The child slept, and the world of dreams enfolded him, and there rose before him the scene of that day; yet the scene of the desert all but outshone every scene that appeared before him —

the desert, that gentle, secure desert his father had painted — the desert of golden sands and splendid views — the desert he had seen inside a gilt frame, and whose living presence he felt none the less — what a beautiful desert it was... Then the child's dream is cut short by ugly sounds reaching him from the library room; he wakes in fright and asks the maid what has happened — and she answers: It is part of a dream, my child. Sleep.