woman, the two streams of the human love which implies the intense
desire of the flesh, and the mystical love which is absolutely purged
of that desire, can flow the one into the other and mingle their waters.
She tried to think that, and then she ceased to try. Everything was
forgotten as his arms held her fast in the night, everything except this
great force of human love which was like iron, and yet soft about her,
which was giving and wanting, which was concentrated upon her to the
exclusion of all else, plunging the universe in darkness and setting her
in light.

"There is nothing for me to-night but you," he said, crushing her in his
arms. "The desert is your garden. To me it has always been your garden,
only that, put here for you, and for me because you love me--but for me
only because of that."

The Arabs' fire was rapidly dying down.

"When it goes out, when it goes out!" Androvsky whispered it her ear.

His breath stirred the thick tresses of her hair.

"Let us watch it!" he whispered.

She pressed his hand but did not reply. She could not speak any more.
At last the something wild and lawless, the something that was more than
passionate, that was hot and even savage in her nature, had risen up in
its full force to face a similar force in him, which insistently called
it and which it answered without shame.

"It is dying," Androvsky said. "It is dying. Look how small the circle
of the flame is, how the darkness is creeping up about it! Domini--do
you see?"

She pressed his hand again.

"Do you long for the darkness?" he asked. "Do you, Domini? The desert
is sending it. The desert is sending it for you, and for me because you
love me."

A log in the fire, charred by the flames, broke in two. Part of it fell
down into the heart of the fire, which sent up a long tongue of red gold
flame.

"That is like us," he said. "Like us together in the darkness."

She felt his body trembling, as if the vehemence of the spirit confined
within it shook it. In the night the breeze slightly increased, making
the flame of the lamp behind them in the tent flicker. And the breeze
was like a message, brought to them from the desert by some envoy in
the darkness, telling them not to be afraid of their wonderful gift of
freedom with each other, but to take it open-handed, open-hearted, with
the great courage of joy.

"Domini, did you feel that gust of the wind? It carried away a cloud of
sparks from the fire and bro