ovsky with the tremendous fires eternally blazing in
the sun. She had a desire that he should hurt her in the passionate
intensity of his love for her. Her nature, which till now had been ever
ready to spring into hostility at an accidental touch, which had shrunk
instinctively from physical contact with other human beings, melted, was
utterly transformed. She felt that she was now the opposite of all that
she had been--more woman than any other woman who had ever lived.
What had been an almost cold strength in her went to increase the
completeness of this yielding to one stronger than herself. What had
seemed boyish and almost hard in her died away utterly under the embrace
of this fierce manhood.

"Domini," he spoke, whispering while he kissed her, "Domini, the fire's
gone out. It's dark."

He lifted her a little in his arms, still kissing her.

"Domini, it's dark, it's dark."

He lifted her more. She stood up, with his arms about her, looking
towards where the fire had been. She put her hands against his face and
softly pressed it back from hers, but with a touch that was a caress. He
yielded to her at once.

"Look!" he said. "Do you love the darkness? Tell me--tell me that you
love it."

She let her hand glide over his cheek in answer.

"Look at it. Love it. All the desert is in it, and our love in the
desert. Let us stay in the desert, let us stay in it for ever--for ever.
It is your garden--yours. It has brought us everything, Domini."

He took her hand and pressed it again and again over his cheek
lingeringly. Then, abruptly, he dropped it.

"Come!" he said. "Domini."

And he drew her in through the tent door almost violently.

A stronger gust of the night wind followed them. Androvsky took his arms
slowly from Domini and turned to let down the flap of the tent. While he
was doing this she stood quite still. The flame of the lamp flickered,
throwing its light now here, now there, uneasily. She saw the crucifix
lit up for an instant and the white bed beneath it. The wind stirred
her dark hair and was cold about her neck. But the warmth there met and
defied it. In that brief moment, while Androvsky was fastening the tent,
she seemed to live through centuries of intense and complicated emotion.
When the light flickered over the crucifix she felt as if she could
spend her life in passionate adoration at its foot; but when she did not
see it, and the wind, coming in from the desert through the tent door,