"I'm jealous of the desert even," he whispered. "I won't let you touch it any more tonight."

He looked into her eyes and saw that she was looking at the distant fire, steadily, with an intense eagerness.

"Why do you do that?" he said.

"To-night I like to look at fire," she answered.

"Tell me why."

"It is as if I looked at you, at all that there is in you that you have never said, never been able to say to me, all that you never can say to me but that I know all the same."

"But," he said, "that fire is----"

He did not finish the sentence, but put up his hand and turned her face till she was looking, not at the fire, but at him.

"It is not like me," he said. "Men made it, and--it's a fire that can sink into ashes."

An expression of sudden exaltation shone in her eyes.

"And G.o.d made you," she said. "And put into you the spark that is eternal."

And now again she thought, she dared, she loved to think of the crucifix and of the moment when he would see it in the tent.

"And G.o.d made you love me," she said. "What is it?"

Androvsky had moved suddenly, as if he were going to get up from the warm ground.

"Did you--?"

"No," he said in a low voice. "Go on, Domini. Speak to me."

He sat still.

A sudden longing came to her to know if to-night he were feeling as she was the sacredness of their relation to each other. Never had they spoken intimately of religion or of the mysteries that lie beyond and around human life. Once or twice, when she had been about to open her heart to him, to let him understand her deep sense of the things unseen, something had checked her, something in him. It was as if he had divined her intention and had subtly turned her from it, without speech, merely by the force of his inward determination that she should not break through his reserve. But to-night, with his hand on hers and the starry darkness above them, with the waste stretching around them, and the cool air that was like the breath of liberty upon their faces, she was unconscious of any secret, combative force in him. It was impossible to her to think there could have been any combat, however inward, however subtle, between them. Surely if it were ever permitted to two natures to be in perfect accord theirs were in perfect accord to-night.

"I never felt the presence of G.o.d in His world so keenly as I feel it to-night," she went on, drawing a little closer to him. "Even in the church to-day He seemed farther away than tonight. But somehow--one has these thoughts without knowing why--I have always believed that the farther I went into the desert the nearer I should come to G.o.d."

Androvsky moved again. The clasp of his hand on hers loosened, but he did not take his hand away.

"Why should--what should make you think that?" he asked slowly.

"Don't you know what the Arabs call the desert?"

"No. What do they call it?"

"The Garden of Allah."

"The Garden of Allah!" he repeated.

There was a sound like fear in his voice. Even her great joy did not prevent her from noticing it, and she remembered, with a thrill of pain, where and under what circ.u.mstances she had first heard the Arab's name for the desert.

Could it be that this man she loved was secretly afraid of something in the desert, some influence, some--? Her thought stopped short, like a thing confused.

"Don't you think it a very beautiful name?" she asked, with an almost fierce longing to be rea.s.sured, to be made to know that he, like her, loved the thought that G.o.d was specially near to those who travelled in this land of solitude.

"Is it beautiful?"

"To me it is. It makes me feel as if in the desert I were specially watched over and protected, even as if I were specially loved there."

Suddenly Androvsky put his arm round her and strained her to him.

"By me! By me!" he said. "Think of me to-night, only of me, as I think only of you."

He spoke as if he were jealous even of her thought of G.o.d, as if he did not understand that it was the very intensity of her love for him that made her, even in the midst of the pa.s.sion of the body, connect their love of each other with G.o.d's love of them. In her heart this overpowering human love which, in the garden, when first she realised it fully, had seemed to leave no room in her for love of G.o.d, now in the moment when it was close to absolute satisfaction seemed almost to be one with her love of G.o.d. Perhaps no man could understand how, in a good 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 pa.s.sionate, 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 brought them a little way towards us. Did you see? Fire wandering on the wind through the night calling to the fire that is in us. Wasn't it beautiful? Everything is beautiful to-night.

There were never such stars before."

She looked up at them. Often she had watched the stars, and known the vague longings, the almost terrible aspirations they wake in their watchers. But to her also they looked different to-night, nearer to the earth, she thought, brighter, more living than ever before, like strange tenderness made visible, peopling the night with an unconquerable sympathy. The vast firmament was surely intent upon their happiness.

Again the breeze came to them across the waste, cool and breathing of the dryness of the sands. Not far away a jackal laughed. After a pause it was answered by another jackal at a distance. The voices of these desert beasts brought home to Domini with an intimacy not felt by her before the exquisite remoteness of their situation, and the shrill, discordant noise, rising and falling with a sort of melancholy and sneering mirth, mingled with bitterness, was like a delicate music in her ears.

"Hark!" Androvsky whispered.