at she was nothing else, had never been anything else. The past years
were nothing, the pain by which she was stricken when her mother fled,
by which she was tormented when her father died blaspheming, were
nothing. There was no room in her for anything but love of Androvsky. At
this moment even her love of God seemed to have been expelled from her.
Afterwards she remembered that. She did not think of it now. For her
there was a universe with but one figure in it--Androvsky. She was
unconscious of herself except as love for him. She was unconscious of
any Creative Power to whom she owed the fact that he was there to be
loved by her. She was passion, and he was that to which passion flowed.

The world was the stream and the sea.

As she sat there with her hands folded on her knees, her eyes bent down,
and the purple flowers all about her, she felt simplified and cleansed,
as if a mass of little things had been swept from her, leaving space
for the great thing that henceforth must for ever dwell within her and
dominate her life. The burning shame of which she had been conscious on
the previous night, when Androvsky told her of his approaching departure
and she was stricken as by a lightning flash, had died away from her
utterly. She remembered it with wonder. How should she be ashamed of
love? She thought that it would be impossible to her to be ashamed, even
if Androvsky knew all that she knew. Just then the immense truth of her
feeling conquered everything else, made every other thing seem false,
and she said to herself that of truth she did not know how to be
ashamed. But with the knowledge of the immense truth of her love came
the knowledge of the immense sorrow that might, that must, dwell side by
side with it.

Suddenly she moved. She lifted her eyes from the sand and looked out
into the garden. Besides this truth within her there was one other thing
in the world that was true. Androvsky was going away. While she sat
there the moments were passing. They were making the hours that were
bent upon destruction. She was sitting in the garden now and Androvsky
was close by. A little time would pass noiselessly. She would be sitting
there and Androvsky would be far away, gone from the desert, gone out of
her life no doubt for ever. And the garden would not have changed. Each
tree would stand in its place, each flower would still give forth its
scent. The breeze would go on travelling through the lacework of the
branches,