It was the hour of Arab prayer.

An older and more learned civilisation would have turned to that magnificent thing upon the skyline and adored _that_.

But these wild children of the desert were nobler in essentials than the polished Persian.

To them the ideal was higher than the material, and it was with their backs to the sun and their faces to the central shrine of their religion that they prayed.

And how they prayed, these fanatical Moslems! Rapt, absorbed, with yearning eyes and shining faces, rising, stooping, grovelling with their foreheads upon their praying carpets.