ll
be dead to-morrow? Who knows? But we're alive to-night, flesh and blood,
heart and soul. And there's nothing here, there can be nothing here to
take our life from us, the life of our love to-night. For we're out in
the desert, we're right away from anyone, everything. We're in the great
freedom. Aren't we, Domini? Aren't we?"

"Yes," she said. "Yes."

He took her other hand in the same way. He was facing her, and he held
his hands against his heart with hers in them, then pressed her hands
against her heart, then drew them back again to his.

"Then let us realise it. Let us forget our prison. Let us forget
everything, everything that we ever knew before Beni-Mora, Domini. It's
dead, absolutely dead, unless we make it live by thinking. And that's
mad, crazy. Thought's the great madness. Domini, have you forgotten
everything before we knew each other?"

"Yes," she said. "Now--but only now. You've made me forget it all."

There was a deep breathing under her voice. He held up her hands to his
shoulders and looked closely into her eyes, as if he were trying to send
all himself into her through those doors of the soul opened to seeing
him. And now, in this moment, she felt that her fierce desire was
realised, that he was rising above her on eagle's wings. And as on the
night before the wedding she had blessed all the sorrows of her life,
now she blessed silently all the long silence of Androvsky, all
his strange reticence, his uncouthness, his avoidance of her in the
beginning of their acquaintance. That which had made her pain by being,
now made her joy by having been and being no more. The hidden man was
rushing forth to her at last in his love. She seemed to hear in the
night the crash of a great obstacle, and the voice of the flood of
waters that had broken it down at length and were escaping into liberty.
His silence of the past now made his speech intensely beautiful and
wonderful to her. She wanted to hear the waters more intensely, more
intensely.

"Speak to me," she said. "You've spoken so little. Do you know how
little? Tell me all you are. Till now I've only felt all you are. And
that's so much, but not enough for a woman--not enough. I've taken you,
but now--give me all I've taken. Give--keep on giving and giving. From
to-night to receive will be my life. Long ago I've given all I had to
you. Give to me, give me everything. You know I've given all."

"All?" he said, and there was a throb in his deep vo