he had
mounted with her.

BOOK III. THE GARDEN

CHAPTER X

It was noon in the desert.

The voice of the Mueddin died away on the minaret, and the golden
silence that comes out of the heart of the sun sank down once more
softly over everything. Nature seemed unnaturally still in the heat.
The slight winds were not at play, and the palms of Beni-Mora stood
motionless as palm trees in a dream. The day was like a dream, intense
and passionate, yet touched with something unearthly, something almost
spiritual. In the cloudless blue of the sky there seemed a magical
depth, regions of colour infinitely prolonged. In the vision of the
distances, where desert blent with sky, earth surely curving up to meet
the downward curving heaven, the dimness was like a voice whispering
strange petitions. The ranges of mountains slept in the burning sand,
and the light slept in their clefts like the languid in cool places.
For there was a glorious languor even in the light, as if the sun were
faintly oppressed by the marvel of his power. The clearness of the
atmosphere in the remote desert was not obscured, but was impregnated
with the mystery that is the wonder child of shadows. The far-off
gold that kept it seemed to contain a secret darkness. In the oasis of
Beni-Mora men, who had slowly roused themselves to pray, sank down to
sleep again in the warm twilight of shrouded gardens or the warm night
of windowless rooms.

In the garden of Count Anteoni Larbi's flute was silent.

"It is like noon in a mirage," Domini said softly.

Count Anteoni nodded.

"I feel as if I were looking at myself a long way off," she added. "As
if I saw myself as I saw the grey sea and the islands on the way to
Sidi-Zerzour. What magic there is here. And I can't get accustomed
to it. Each day I wonder at it more and find it more inexplicable. It
almost frightens me."

"You could be frightened?"

"Not easily by outside things--it least I hope not."

"But what then?"

"I scarcely know. Sometimes I think all the outside things, which do
what are called the violent deeds in life, are tame, and timid, and
ridiculously impotent in comparison with the things we can't see, which
do the deeds we can't describe."

"In the mirage of this land you begin to see the exterior life as a
mirage? You are learning, you are learning."

There was a creeping sound of something that was almost impish in his
voice.

"Are you a secret agent?" Domini asked him