iously disappeared. Her presents were the velvety roses in the
earthen vases, the breezes of the desert, the sand humps, the yellow
butterflies, the silence that lay around like a blessing pronounced
by the God who made the still places where souls can learn to know
themselves and their great destiny.

"A wedding breakfast," Androvsky said.

"Yes. But perhaps you have never been to one."

"Never."

"Then you can't love this one as much as I do."

"Much more," he answered.

She looked at him, remembering how often in the past, when she had been
feeling intensely, she had it borne in upon her that he was feeling even
more intensely than herself. But could that be possible now?

"Do you think," she said, "that it is possible for you, who have never
lived in cities, to love this land as I love it?"

Androvsky moved on his cushion and leaned down till his elbow touched
the sand. Lying thus, with his chin in his hand, and his eyes fixed upon
her, he answered:

"But it is not the land I am loving."

His absolute concentration upon her made her think that, perhaps, he
misunderstood her meaning in speaking of the desert, her joy in it.
She longed to explain how he and the desert were linked together in
her heart, and she dropped her hand upon his left hand, which lay palm
downwards in the warm sand.

"I love this land," she began, "because I found you in it, because I
feel----"

She stopped.

"Yes, Domini?" he said.

"No, not now. I can't tell you. There's too much light."

"Domini," he repeated.

Then they were silent once more, thinking of how the darkness would come
to them at Arba.

In the late afternoon they drew near to the Bordj, moving along a
difficult route full of deep ruts and holes, and bordered on either side
by bushes so tall that they looked almost like trees. Here, tended by
Arabs who stared gravely at the strangers in the palanquin, were grazing
immense herds of camels. Above the bushes to the horizon on either side
of the way appeared the serpentine necks flexibly moving to and fro,
now bending deliberately towards the dusty twigs, now stretched straight
forward as if in patient search for some solace of the camel's fate that
lay in the remoteness of the desert. Baby camels, many of them only
a few days old, yet already vowed to the eternal pilgrimages of the
wastes, with mild faces and long, disobedient-looking legs, ran from
the caravan, nervously seeking their morose mothers, who cast