ripple of water, and glistening—Earth’s diamond tiara—in the fierce white light of the Sun-God. … A hot wind smote the face like a furnace-blast; the glare was a flame-red brand across the eyes … no relief anywhere, and yet, a strange sense of freedom in this sea of sand waves.
Under a bare tree of white thorns lay a small bundle of pink rags, a child with a shock head of hair, the only bit of life and colour anywhere it seemed at first. She lay quite still, on her back, motionless.
In the distance across the sand walked a woman, slowly, painfully; on her head was a water-pot, she walked away from the child, but every now and then she turned to look at the tree of white thorns. You knew what she sought … would she find it? and having found would she be in time?
The train crawled on to the river, and there was the woman ever walking away and away, and ever turning to look back; and the child under the shelter of a handful of thorn-needles still, so still, and the sun smiting on the gleaming sand. …
From the river in the growing dusk I saw
