of existence in
the world, and at that moment she worshipped suffering. Every tear that
she had ever shed she loved, every weary hour, every despondent thought,
every cruel disappointment. She called around her the congregation of
her past sorrows, and she blessed them and bade them depart from her for
ever.

As she heard the roaring of the wind she smiled. The Sahara was
fulfilling the words of the Diviner. To-morrow she and Androvsky would
go out into the storm and the darkness together. The train of camels
would be lost in the desolation of the desert. And the people of
Beni-Mora would see it vanish, and, perhaps, would pity those who were
hidden by the curtains of the palanquin. They would pity her as Suzanne
pitied her, openly, with eyes that were tragic. She laughed aloud.

It was late in the night. Midnight had sounded yet she did not go to
bed. She feared to sleep, to lose the consciousness of her joy of the
glory which had come into her life. She was a miser of the golden hours
of this black and howling night. To sleep would be to be robbed. A
splendid avarice in her rebelled against the thought of sleep.

Was Androvsky sleeping? She wondered and longed to know.

To-night she was fully aware for the first time of the inherent
fearlessness of her character, which was made perfect at last by her
perfect love. Alone, she had always had courage. Even in her most
listless hours she had never been a craven. But now she felt the
completeness of a nature clothed in armour that rendered it impregnable.
It was a strange thing that man should have the power to put the
finishing touch to God's work, that religion should stoop to be a
handmaid to faith in a human being, but she did not think it strange.
Everything in life seemed to her to be in perfect accord because her
heart was in perfect accord with another heart.

And she welcomed the storm. She even welcomed something else that came
to her now in the storm: the memory of the sand-diviner's tortured
face as he gazed down, reading her fate in the sand. For what was an
untroubled fate? Surely a life that crept along the hollows and had no
impulse to call it to the heights. Knowing the flawless perfection of
her armour she had a wild longing to prove it. She wished that there
should be assaults upon her love, because she knew she could resist
them one and all, and she wished to have the keen joy of resisting them.
There is a health of body so keen and vital that it d