At a quarter before four on the morning of the Feast of Sidi Oman, Willard Bent stood waiting at the door of the Mission.

He had taken leave of Mr. Blandhorn the previous night, and stumbled down the dark stairs on bare feet, his bundle under his arm, just as the sky began to whiten around the morning star.

The air was full of a mocking coolness which the first ray of the sun would burn up; and a hush as deceptive lay on the city that was so soon to blaze with religious frenzy. Ayoub lay curled up on his doorstep like a dog, and old Myriem, presumably, was still stretched on her mattress on the roof.

What a day for a flight across the desert in Harry’s tough little car! And after the hours of heat and dust and glare, how good, at twilight, to see the cool welter of the Atlantic, a spent sun dropping into it, and the rush of the stars . . . Dizzy with the vision, Willard leaned against the door-post with closed eyes.

A subdued hoot aroused him, and he hurried out to the car, which was quivering and growling at the nearest corner. The drummer nodded a welcome, and they began to wind cautiously between sleeping animals and huddled heaps of humanity till they reached the nearest gate.

On the waste land beyond the walls the people of the caravans were already stirring, and pilgrims from the hills streaming across the palmetto scrub under emblazoned banners. As the sun rose the air took on a bright transparency in which distant objects became unnaturally near and vivid, like pebbles seen through clear water: a little turban-shaped tomb far off in the waste looked as lustrous as ivory, and a tiled minaret in an angle of the walls seemed to be carved out of turquoise. How Eloued lied to eyes looking back on it at sunrise!

“Something wrong,” said Harry Spink, putting on the brake and stopping in the thin shade of a cork-tree. They got out and Willard leaned against the tree and gazed at the red walls of Eloued. They were already about two miles from the town, and all around them was the wilderness. Spink shoved his head into the bonnet, screwed and greased and hammered, and finally wiped his hands on a black rag and called out: “I thought so — . Jump in!”

Willard did not move.

“Hurry up, old man. She’s all right, I tell you. It was just the carburettor.”

The missionary fumbled under his draperies and pulled out Mr. Blandhorn’s letter.

“Will you see that the Consul gets this tomorrow?”

“Will I— what the hell’s the matter, Willard?” Spink dropped his rag and stared.

“I’m not coming. I never meant to.”

The young men exchanged a long look.

“It’s no time to leave Mr. Blandhorn — a day like this,” Willard continued, moistening his dry lips.

Spink shrugged, and sounded a faint whistle. “Queer —!”

“What’s queer?”

“He said just the same thing to me about you — wanted to get you out of Eloued on account of the goings on today. He said you’d been rather worked up lately about religious matters, and might do something rash that would get you both into trouble.”

“Ah — ” Willard murmured.

“And I believe you might, you know — you look sorter funny.” Willard laughed.

“Oh, come along,” his friend urged, disappointed.

“I’m sorry — I can’t. I had to come this far so that he wouldn’t know. But now I’ve got to go back. Of course what he told you was just a joke — but I must be there today to see that nobody bothers him.”

Spink scanned his companion’s face with friendly flippant eyes. “Well, I give up — . What’s the use, when he don’t want you? — Say,” he broke off, “what’s the truth of that story about the old man’s having insulted a marabout in a mosque night before last? It was all over the bazaar — ”

Willard felt himself turn pale. “Not a marabout. It was — where did you hear it?” he stammered.

“All over — the way you hear stories in these places.”

“Well — it’s not true.” Willard lifted his bundle from the motor and tucked it under his arm. “I’m sorry, Harry — I’ve got to go back,” he repeated.

“What? The Call, eh?” The sneer died on Spink’s lips, and he held out his hand. “Well, I’m sorry too. So long.” He turned the crank, scrambled into his seat, and cried back over his shoulder: “What’s the use, when he don’t want you?”

Willard was already labouring home across the plain.

After struggling along for half an hour in the sand he crawled under the shade of an abandoned well and sat down to ponder. Two courses were open to him, and he had not yet been able to decide between them. His first impulse was to go straight to the Mission, and present himself to Mr. Bland-horn. He felt sure, from what Spink had told him, that the old missionary had sent him away purposely, and the fact seemed to confirm his apprehensions. If Mr. Bland-horn wanted him away, it was not through any fear of his imprudence, but to be free from his restraining influence. But what act did the old man contemplate, in which he feared to involve his disciple? And if he were really resolved on some rash measure, might not Willard’s unauthorized return merely serve to exasperate this resolve, and hasten whatever action he had planned?

The other step the young man had in mind was to go secretly to the French Administration, and there drop a hint of what he feared. It was the course his sober judgment commended. The echo of Spink’s “What’s the use?” was in his ears: it was the expression of his own secret doubt. What was the use? If dying could bring any of these darkened souls to the light . . . well, that would have been different. But what least sign was there that it would do anything but rouse their sleeping blood-lust?

Willard was oppressed by the thought that had always lurked beneath his other doubts. They talked, he and Mr. Blandhorn, of the poor ignorant heathen — but were not they themselves equally ignorant in everything that concerned the heathen? What did they know of these people, of their antecedents, the origin of their beliefs and superstitions, the meaning of their habits and passions and precautions? Mr. Blandhorn seemed never to have been troubled by this question, but it had weighed on Willard ever since he had come across a quiet French ethnologist who was studying the tribes of the Middle Atlas. Two or three talks with this traveller — or listenings to him — had shown Willard the extent of his own ignorance. He would have liked to borrow books, to read, to study; but he knew little French and no German, and he felt confusedly that there was in him no soil sufficiently prepared for facts so overwhelmingly new to root in it . . . And the heat lay on him, and the little semblance of his missionary duties deluded him . . . and he drifted . . .

As for Mr. Blandhorn, he never read anything but the Scriptures, a volume of his own sermons (printed by subscription, to commemorate his departure for Morocco), and — occasionally — a back number of the missionary journal that arrived at Eloued at long intervals, in thick mouldy batches, Consequently no doubts disturbed him, and Willard felt the hopelessness of grappling with an ignorance so much deeper and denser than his own. Whichever way his mind turned, it seemed to bring up against the blank wall of Harry Spink’s; “What’s the use?”

He slipped through the crowds in the congested gateway, and made straight for the Mission. He had decided to go to the French Administration, but he wanted first to find out from the servants what Mr. Blandhorn was doing, and what his state of mind appeared to be.

The Mission door was locked, but Willard was not surprised; he knew the precaution was sometimes taken on feast days, though seldom so early. He rang, and waited impatiently for Myriem’s old face in the crack; but no one came, and below his breath he cursed her with expurgated curses.

“Ayoub — Ayoub!” he cried, rattling at the door; but still no answer. Ayoub, apparently, was off too. Willard rang the bell again, giving the three long pulls of the “emergency call”; it was the summons which always roused Mr. Blandhorn. But no one came.

Willard shook and pounded, and hung on the bell till it tinkled its life out in a squeak . . . but all in vain. The house was empty: Mr. Blandhorn was evidently out with the others.

Disconcerted, the young man turned, and plunged into the red clay purlieus behind the Mission. He entered a mud-hut where an emaciated dog, dozing on the threshold, lifted a recognizing lid, and let him by. It was the house of Ahmed’s father, the water-carrier, and Willard knew it would be empty at that hour.

A few minutes later there emerged into the crowded streets a young American dressed in a black coat of vaguely clerical cut, with a soft felt hat shading his flushed cheek-bones, and a bead running up and down his nervous throat.

The bazaar was already full of a deep holiday rumour, like the rattle of wind in the palm-tops. The young man in the clerical coat, sharply examined as he passed by hundreds of long Arab eyes, slipped into the lanes behind the soukhs, and by circuitous passages gained the neighbourhood of the Great Mosque. His heart was hammering against his black coat, and under the buzz in his brain there boomed out insistently the old question: “What’s the use?”

Suddenly, near the fountain that faced one of the doors of the Great Mosque, he saw the figure of a man dressed like himself. The eyes of the two men met across the crowd, and Willard pushed his way to Mr. Blandhorn’s side.

“Sir, why did you — why are you —? I’m back — I couldn’t help it,” he gasped out disconnectedly.

He had expected a vehement rebuke; but the old missionary only smiled on him sadly. “It was noble of you, Willard . . . I understand . . . ” He looked at the young man’s coat. “We had the same thought — again — at the same hour.” He paused, and drew Willard into the empty passage of a ruined building behind the fountain. “But what’s the use, — what’s the use?” he exclaimed.

The blood rushed to the young man’s forehead. “Ah — then you feel it too?”

Mr. Blandhorn continued, grasping his arm: “I’ve been out — in this dress — ever since you left; I’ve hung about the doors of the Medersas, I’ve walked up to the very threshold of the Mosque, I’ve leaned against the wall of Sidi Oman’s shrine; once the police warned me, and I pretended to go away . . . but I came back . . . I pushed up closer . . . I stood in the doorway of the Mosque, and they saw me . . . the people inside saw me . . . and no one touched me . . . I’m too harmless . . . they don’t believe in me!”

He broke off, and under his struggling eyebrows Willard saw the tears on his old lids.

The young man gathered courage. “But don’t you see, sir, that that’s the reason it’s no use? We don’t understand them any more than they do us; they know it, and all our witnessing for Christ will make no difference.”

Mr. Blandhorn looked at him sternly. “Young man, no Christian has the r............