"I think it's rather wonderful and just a little horrible," said Sarah. "I always thought of it as romantic and dreamlike—the 'rose red city.' But it's much more real than that—it's as real as—as raw beef."

"And very much the color of it," agreed Mr. Cope.

"But it's marvelous, too," admitted Sarah.

The party began to climb. Two Bedouin guides accompanied them. Tall men, with an easy carriage, they swung upward unconcernedly in their hobnailed boots, completely foot-sure on the slippery slope. Difficulties soon began. Sarah had a good head for heights and so had Dr. Gerard. But both Mr. Cope and Lady Westholme were far from happy, and the unfortunate Miss Pierce had to be almost carried over the precipitous places, her eyes shut, her face green, while her voice rose ceaselessly in a perpetual wail: "I never could look down places. Never—from a child!"

Once she declared her intention of going back, but on turning to face the descent, her skin assumed an even greener tinge, and she reluctantly decided that to go on was the only thing to be done.

Dr. Gerard was kind and reassuring. He went up behind her, holding his stick between her and the sheer drop like a balustrade, and she confessed that the illusion of a rail did much to conquer the feeling of vertigo.

Sarah, panting a little, asked the dragoman, Mahmoud, who in spite of his ample proportions showed no signs of distress: "Don't you ever have trouble getting people up here? Elderly ones, I mean."

"Always—always we have trouble," agreed Mahmoud serenely.

"Do you always try and take them?"

Mahmoud shrugged his thick shoulders. "They like to come. They have paid money to see these things. They wish to see them. The Bedouin guides are very clever—very surefooted—always they manage."

They arrived at last at the summit. Sarah drew a deep breath. All around and below stretched the blood-red rocks—a strange and unbelievable country unparalleled anywhere. Here in the exquisite pure morning air, they stood like gods, surveying a baser world—a world of flaring violence.

Here was, as the guide told them, the "Place of Sacrifice"—the "High Place."

He showed them the trough cut in the flat rock at their feet. Sarah strayed away from the rest, from the glib phrases that flowed so readily from the dragoman's tongue. She sat on a rock, pushed her hands through her thick black hair, and gazed down on the world at her feet. Presently she was aware of someone standing by her side.

Dr. Gerard's voice said: "You appreciate the appositeness of the devil's temptation in the New Testament. Satan took Our Lord up to the summit of a mountain and showed him the world. 'All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.' How much greater the temptation up on high to be a God of Material Power."

Sarah assented, but her thoughts were so clearly elsewhere that Gerard observed her in some surprise. "You are pondering something very deeply," he said.