The wind wailed behind him and stirred his
clothes. His eyes shone in the faint light with a fierceness of emotion
in which there was a joy that was almost terrible, but in which there
seemed also to be something that was troubled. When the song died away,
and only the voices of the wind and the drum spoke to the darkness, he
disappeared into the night. The Arabs did not see him.
"Janat! Janat! Janat!"
The night drew on and the storm increased. All the doors of the houses
were closely shut. Upon the roofs the guard dogs crouched, shivering
and whining, against the earthen parapets. The camels groaned in the
fondouks, and the tufted heads of the palms swayed like the waves of the
sea. And the Sahara seemed to be lifting up its voice in a summons that
was tremendous as a summons to Judgment.
Domini had always known that the desert would summon her. She heard its
summons now in the night without fear. The roaring of the tempest was
sweet in her ears as the sound of the Derbouka to the loving man of the
sands. It accorded with the fire that lit up the cloud of passion in
her heart. Its wildness marched in step with a marching wildness in
her veins and pulses.
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