d.

"You have discovered that in this garden?"

"Ah, it is new to you, Madame!"

For the first time there was a sound of faint bitterness in his voice.

"One often discovers the saddest thing in the loveliest place," he
added. "There you begin to see the desert."

Far away, at the small orifice of the tunnel of trees down which they
were walking, appeared a glaring patch of fierce and quivering sunlight.

"I can only see the sun," Domini said.

"I know so well what it hides that I imagine I actually see the desert.
One loves one's kind, assiduous liar. Isn't it so?"

"The imagination? But perhaps I am not disposed to allow that it is a
liar."

"Who knows? You may be right."

He looked at her kindly with his bright eyes. It had not seem to strike
him that their conversation was curiously intimate, considering that
they were strangers to one another, that he did not even know her name.
Domini wondered suddenly how old he was. That look made him seem much
older than he had seemed before. There was such an expression in his
eyes as may sometimes be seen in eyes that look at a child who is
kissing a rag doll with deep and determined affection. "Kiss your doll!"
they seemed to say. "Put off the years when you must know that dolls can
never return a kiss."

"I begin to see the desert now," Domini said after a moment of silent
walking. "How wonderful it is!"

"Yes, it is. The most wonderful thing in Nature. You will think it much
more wonderful when you fancy you know it well."

"Fancy!"

"I don't think anyone can ever really know the desert. It is the thing
that keeps calling, and does not permit one to draw near."

"But then, one might learn to hate it."

"I don't think so. Truth does just the same, you know. And yet men keep
on trying to draw near."

"But sometimes they succeed."

"Do they? Not when they live in gardens."

He laughed for the first time since they had been together, and all his
face was covered with a network of little moving lines.

"One should never live in a garden, Madame."

"I will try to take your word for it, but the task will be difficult."

"Yes? More difficult, perhaps, when you see what lies beside my thoughts
of truth."

As he spoke they came out from the tunnel and were seized by the fierce
hands of the sun. It was within half an hour of noon, and the radiance
was blinding. Domini put up her parasol sharply, like one startled. She
stopped.

"But how tremendous!" sh