downfall the
more absolute?

And then, she knew not why, she seemed to see in the hands that were
pressed against her face words written in fire, and to read them slowly
as a child spelling out a great lesson, with an intense attention, with
a labour whose result would be eternal recollection:

"Love watcheth, and sleeping, slumbereth not. When weary it is not
tired; when straitened it is not constrained; when frightened it is
not disturbed; but like a vivid flame and a burning torch it mounteth
upwards and securely passeth through all. Whosover loveth knoweth the
cry of this voice."

The cry of this voice! At that moment, in the vast silence of the
desert, she seemed to hear it. And it was the cry of her own voice. It
was the cry of the voice of her own soul. Startled, she lifted her face
from her hands and listened. She did not look out at the tent door, but
she saw the moonlight falling upon the matting that was spread upon
the sand within the tent, and she repeated, "Love watcheth--Love
watcheth--Love watcheth," moving her lips like the child who reads with
difficulty. Then came the thought, "I am watching."

The passion of personal anger had died away as suddenly as it had come.
She felt numb and yet excited. She leaned forward and once more laid her
face in her hands.

"Love watcheth--I am watching." Then a moment--then--"God is watching
me."

She whispered the words over again and again. And the numbness began
to pass away. And the anger was dead. Always she had felt as if she had
been led to Africa for some definite end. Did not the freed negroes, far
out in the Desert, sing their song of the deeper mysteries--"No one but
God and I knows what is in my heart"? And had not she heard it again and
again, and each time with a sense of awe? She had always thought that
the words were wonderful and beautiful. But she had thought that perhaps
they were not true. She had said to Androvsky that he knew what was in
her heart. And now, in this night, in its intense stillness, close to
the man who for so long had not dared to pray but who now was praying,
again she thought that they were not quite true. It seemed to her that
she did not know what was in her heart, and that she was waiting there
for God to come and tell her. Would He come? She waited. Patience
entered into her.

The silence was long. Night was travelling, turning her thoughts to
a distant world. The moon waned, and a faint breath of wind that was
alm