She thought that her genuine
adoration of the garden he had made, of the land in which it was set,
had not a little to do with the happy nature of their intercourse. For
she felt certain that beneath the light satire of his manner, his often
smiling airs of detachment and quiet independence, there was something
that could seek almost with passion, that could cling with resolution,
that could even love with persistence. And she fancied that he sought
in the desert, that he clung to its mystery, that he loved it and the
garden he had created in it. Once she had laughingly called him a desert
spirit. He had smiled as if with contentment.
They knew little of each other, yet they had become friends in the
garden which he never left.
One day she said to him:
"You love the desert. Why do you never go into it?"
"I prefer to watch it," he relied. "When you are in the desert it
bewilders you."
She remembered what she had felt during her first ride with Androvsky.
"I believe you are afraid of it," she said challengingly.
"Fear is sometimes the beginning of wisdom," he answered. "But you are
without it, I know.
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