Beyond the limits of the monastery there was not a sign of life; neither
beast nor bird, nor blade of grass, nor any green thing; only the perfect
immemorial blue, and in the east a misty moon, striving in vain to offer
light which the earth as yet rejected for the brooding radiance of the
descending sun. But at the great door of the monastery there grew a
stately palm, and near by an ancient acacia-tree; and beyond the stone
chapel there was a garden of struggling shrubs and green things, with one
rose-tree which scattered its pink leaves from year to year upon the
loam, since no man gathered bud or blossom.

The triumphant call of the Magnificat, however beautiful, seemed
strangely out of place in this lonely island in a sea of sand. It was
the song of a bannered army, marching over the battle-field with
conquering voices, and swords as yet unsheathed and red, carrying the
spoils of conquest behind the laurelled captain of the host. The
crumbling and ancient walls were surrounded by a moat which a stranger's
foot crossed hardly from moon to moon, which the desert wayfarer sought
rarely, since it was out of the track of caravans, and because food was
scant in the refectory of this Coptic brotherhood. It was scarce five
hours' ride from the Palace of the Prince Pasha: but it might have been a
thousand miles away, so profoundly separate was it from the world of
vital things and deeds of men.

As the chant rang out, confident, majestic, and serene, carried by voices
of power and shrill sweetness, which only the desert can produce, it
might have seemed to any listener that this monastery was all that
remained of some ancient kingdom of brimming, active cities, now lying
beneath the obliterating sand, itself the monument and memorial of a
breath of mercy of the Destroyer, the last refuge of a few surviving