A rebuilt doorway in the right-hand wall led into his whitewashed living room, at the northeast end of which two large casements framed the splendid view over the Oasis and the desert.
In a corner of the room, on a small table, a simple but not uninviting meal was spread upon a spotless tablecloth. Fresh poultry and eggs were always plentiful in the Oasis; and on the store-room shelves there was a large and varied supply of preserved foods, and even delicacies, which had been brought over some months ago in a train of camels from Cairo.
Daniel sat down to his meal with good appetite; and as he munched his food in silence his gaze travelled round the airy room and brought back to his heart a glow of pleasant contentment. After all, what could the outside world give him in exchange for the peace and comfort of his desert home? Here he had the intellectual companionship of his books and his work, the simple friendship of courteous, good-hearted men, who had come to regard him as a kind of teacher, and the devotion of three well-meaning, if somewhat degenerate, yellow dogs. Here the brilliant sun, and the splendid north wind, which blew continuously from the distant Mediterranean across the great intervening spaces of clean desert, brought vigour and health to his body and a kind of laughing enthusiasm to his brain. Here he could amuse himself by long rambling walks in the freedom of the empty desert, or, with his gun, could make exciting expeditions in search of gazelle. Here, on the flat roof at the top of one of the ancient towers of the monastery, he slept each night under the blazing stars, lying in his comfortable camp-bed, breathing the purest air in all the world, and gazing up into the vault of the heavens, till the calm sleep of a child descended upon him. And here from golden sunrise to golden sunset the days slipped by, each brought to perfection by that greatest of all human blessings, an untroubled mind.
He rose from the table, and, lighting his pipe, sank luxuriously into a deck-chair, a book of the poems of Hafiz in his hand, a cup of Turkish coffee by his side, his feet resting crossed upon a wooden stool, and the cry of the hawks and the drone of the bees making music in his ears.