In the desert, wherever I may
be--and I shall tell you--I am at your service."
"Thank you," she said simply.
She gave him her hand. He held it almost as a father or a guardian might
have held it.
"And this garden is yours day and night--Smain knows."
"Thank you," she said again.
The shrill whinnying of a horse came to them from a distance. Their
hands fell apart. Count Anteoni looked round him slowly at the great
cocoanut tree, at the shaggy grass of the lawn, at the tall bamboos
and the drooping mulberry trees. She saw that he was taking a silent
farewell of them.
"This was a waste," he said at last with a half-stifled sigh. "I turned
it into a little Eden and now I am leaving it."
"For a time."
"And if it were for ever? Well, the great thing is to let the waste
within one be turned into an Eden, if that is possible. And yet how many
human beings strive against the great Gardener. At any rate I will not
be one of them."
"And I will not be one."
"Shall we say good-bye here?"
"No. Let us say it from the wall, and let me see you ride away into the
desert."
She had forgotten for the moment that his route was the road through
the oasis.
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