"And people talk of the monotony of the Sahara!" Domini said speaking out of their mutual thought. "Everything is here, Boris; you've never drawn near to London. Long before you reach the first suburbs you feel London like a great influence brooding over the fields and the woods.
Here you feel Amara in the same way brooding over the sands. It's as if the sands were full of voices. Doesn't it excite you?"
"Yes," he said. "But"--and he turned in his saddle and looked back--"I feel as if the solitudes were safer."
"We can return to them."
"Yes."
"We are splendidly free. There's nothing to prevent us leaving Amara tomorrow."
"Isn't there?" he answered, fixing his eyes upon the minarets.
"What can there be?"
"Who knows?"
"What do you mean, Boris? Are you superstitious? But you reject the influence of place. Don't you remember--at Mogar?"
At the mention of the name his face clouded and she was sorry she had spoken it. Since they had left the hill above the mirage sea they had scarcely ever alluded to their night there. They had never once talked of the dinner in camp with De Trevignac and his men, or renewed their conversation in the tent on the subject of religion. But since that day, since her words about Androvsky's lack of perfect happiness even with her far out in the freedom of the desert, Domini had been conscious that, despite their great love for each other, their mutual passion for the solitude in which it grew each day more deep and more engrossing, wrapping their lives in fire and leading them on to the inner abodes of sacred understanding, there was at moments a barrier between them.
At first she had striven not to recognise its existence. She had striven to be blind. But she was essentially a brave woman and an almost fanatical lover of truth for its own sake, thinking that what is called an ugly truth is less ugly than the loveliest lie. To deny truth is to play the coward. She could not long do that. And so she quickly learned to face this truth with steady eyes and an unflinching heart.
At moments Androvsky retreated from her, his mind became remote--more, his heart was far from her, and, in its distant place, was suffering.
Of that she was assured.
But she was assured, too, that she stood to him for perfection in human companionship. A woman's love is, perhaps, the only true divining rod. Domini knew instinctively where lay the troubled waters, what troubled them in their subterranean dwelling. She was certain that Androvsky was at peace with her but not with himself. She had said to him in the tent that she thought he sometimes felt far away from God. The conviction grew in her that even the satisfaction of his great human love was not enough for his nature. He demanded, sometimes imperiously, not only the peace that can be understood gloriously, but also that other peace which passeth understanding. And because he had it not he suffered.
In the Garden of Allah he felt a loneliness even though she was with him, and he could not speak with her of this loneliness. That was the barrier between them, she thought.
She prayed for him: in the tent by night, in the desert under the burning sky by day. When the muezzin cried from the minaret of some tiny village lost in the desolation of the wastes, turning to the north, south, east and west, and the Mussulmans bowed their shaved heads, facing towards Mecca, she prayed to the Catholics' God, whom she felt to be the God, too, of all the devout, of all the religions of the world, and to the Mother of God, looking towards Africa. She prayed that this man whom she loved, and who she believed was seeking, might find. And she felt that there was a strength, a passion in her prayers, which could not be rejected. She felt that some day Allah would show himself in his garden to the wanderer there. She dared to feel that because she dared to believe in the endless mercy of God.
And when that moment came she felt, too, that their love--hers and his --for each other would be crowned. Beautiful and intense as it was it still lacked something. It needed to be encircled by the protecting love of a God in whom they both believed in the same way, and to whom they both were equally near. While she felt close to this love and he far from it they were not quite together.
There were moments in which she was troubled, even sad, but they passed. For she had a great courage, a great confidence. The hope that dwells like a flame in the purity of prayer comforted her.
"I love the solitudes," he said. "I love to have you to myself."
"If we lived always in the greatest city of the world it would make no difference," she said quietly. "You know that, Boris."
He bent over from his saddle and clasped her hand in his, and they rode thus up the great slope of the sands, with their horses close together.
The minarets of the city grew more distinct. They dominated the waste as the thought of Allah dominates the Mohammedan world. Presently, far away on the left, Domini and Androvsky saw hills of sand, clearly defined like small mountains delicately shaped. On the summits of these hills were Arab villages of the hue of bronze gleaming in the sun. No trees stood near them. But beyond them, much farther off, was the long green line of the palms of a large oasis. Between them and the riders moved slowly towards the minarets dark things that looked like serpents writhing through the sands. These were caravans coming into the city from long journeys. Here and there, dotted about in the immensity, were solitary horsemen, camels in twos and threes, small troops of donkeys. And all the things that moved went towards the minarets as if irresistibly drawn onwards by some strong influence that sucked them in from the solitudes of the whirlpool of human life.
