"I love you but don't listen to me--you mustn't
hear it--you mustn't. But I must say it. I can't--I can't go till I say
it. I love you--I love you."

She heard him sobbing against her knees, and the sound was as the sound
of strength made audible. She put her hands against his temples.

"I am listening," she said. "I must hear it."

He looked up, rose to his feet, put his hands behind her shoulders, held
her, and set his lips on hers, pressing his whole body against hers.

"Hear it!" he said, muttering against her lips. "Hear it. I love you--I
love you."

The two birds they had seen flew back beneath the trees, turned in an
airy circle, rose above the trees into the blue sky, and, side by side,
winged their way out of the garden to the desert.

BOOK IV. THE JOURNEY

CHAPTER XVI

In the evening before the day of Domini's marriage with Androvsky there
was a strange sunset, which attracted even the attention and roused the
comment of the Arabs. The day had been calm and beautiful, one of the
most lovely days of the North African spring, and Batouch, resting from
the triumphant labour of superintending the final preparations for a
long desert journey, augured a morning of Paradise for the departure
along the straight road that led at last to Tombouctou. But as the
radiant afternoon drew to its end there came into the blue sky a
whiteness that suggested a heaven turning pale in the contemplation of
some act that was piteous and terrible. And under this blanching heaven
the desert, and all things and people of the oasis of Beni-Mora, assumed
an aspect of apprehension, as if they felt themselves to be in the
thrall of some power whose omnipotence they could not question and whose
purpose they feared. This whiteness was shot, at the hour of sunset,
with streaks of sulphur yellow and dappled with small, ribbed clouds
tinged with yellow-green, a bitter and cruel shade of green that
distressed the eyes as a merciless light distresses them, but these
colours quickly faded, and again the whiteness prevailed for a brief
space of time before the heavy falling of a darkness unpierced by stars.
With this darkness came a faint moaning of hollow wind from the desert,
a lamentable murmur that shuddered over the great spaces, crept among
the palms and the flat-roofed houses, and died away at the foot of the
brown mountains beyond the Hammam Salahine. The succeeding silence,
short and intense, was like a sound of fear, li