chunk: The novel opens in a hotel in the Algerian city of Biskra. A dance is being held, hosted by a young woman named Diana Mayo and her brother, Sir Aubrey Mayo. It transpires that Diana is planning to leave on a month-long trip into the desert, taking no one with her but an Arab guide. Nobody thinks this is a sensible idea, and Lady Conway—a real person who appears in the book as a minor character—disapprovingly attributes Diana's adventurous plan to her "scandalous" upbringing. Diana's mother had died giving birth to her and her father had killed himself from grief, with the result that Diana grew up tomboyish, with a freedom that at the time was normally only allowed to boys.