"I have been living in what is called the great world."
"And you call that a prison?"
"Now that I am living in the greater world, really living at last. I
have been in the heart of insincerity, and now I have come into the
heart, the fiery heart of sincerity. It's there--there"--she pointed
to the desert. "And it has intoxicated me; I think it has made me
unreasonable. I expect everyone--not an Arab--to be as it is, and every
little thing that isn't quite frank, every pretence, is like a horrible
little hand tugging at me, as if trying to take me back to the prison I
have left. I think, deep down, I have always loathed lies, but never as
I have loathed them since I came here. It seems to me as if only in the
desert there is freedom for the body, and only in truth there is freedom
for the soul."
She stopped, drew a long breath, and added:
"You must forgive me. I have worried you. I have made you do what you
didn't want to do. And then I have attacked you. It is unpardonable."
"Show me the garden, Madame," he said in a very low voice.
Her outburst over, she felt a slight self-consciousness.
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