ions, the
struggles, the triumphs, the torturing regrets, the brave determinations
of poor, great, feeble, noble humanity were enclosed as in a casket--a
casket which contains many kinds of jewels, but surely none that are not
precious.

And the garden listened, and beyond the garden the desert listened--that
other garden of Allah. And in this garden was not Allah, too, listening
to this silence of his children, this last mutual silence of theirs in
the garden where they had wandered, where they had loved, where they had
learned a great lesson and drawn near to a great victory?

They might have sat thus for hours; they had lost all count of time. But
presently, in the distance among the trees, there rose a light, frail
sound that struck into both their hearts like a thin weapon. It was the
flute of Larbi, and it reminded them--of what did it not remind them?
All their passionate love of the body, all their lawlessness, all the
joy of liberty and of life, of the barbaric life that is liberty, all
their wandering in the great spaces of the sun, were set before them in
Larbi's fluttering tune, that was like the call of a siren, the call
of danger, the call of earth and of earthly things, summoning them to
abandon the summons of the spirit. Domini got up swiftly.

"Come, Boris," she said, without looking at him.

He obeyed her and rose to his feet.

"Let us go to the wall," she said, "and look out once more on the
desert. It must be nearly noon. Perhaps--perhaps we shall hear the call
to prayer."

They walked down the winding alleys towards the edge of the garden. The
sound of the flute of Larbi died away gradually into silence. Soon they
saw before them the great spaces of the Sahara flooded with the blinding
glory of the summer sunlight. They stood and looked out over it from the
shelter of some pepper trees. No caravans were passing. No Arabs were
visible. The desert seemed utterly empty, given over, naked, to the
dominion of the sun. While they stood there the nasal voice of the
Mueddin rose from the minaret of the mosque of Beni-Mora, uttered its
fourfold cry, and died away.

"Boris," Domini said, "that is for the Arabs, but for us, too, for we
belong to the garden of Allah as they do, perhaps even more than they."

"Yes, Domini."

She remembered how, long ago, Count Anteoni had stood there with her and
repeated the words of the angel to the Prophet, and she murmured them
now:

"O thou that art covered, ar