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Hichens, Robert Smythe, 1864-1950

"The Garden of Allah"


To-night she was fully aware for the first time of the inherent
fearlessness of her character, which was made perfect at last by her
perfect love. Alone, she had always had courage. Even in her most
listless hours she had never been a craven. But now she felt the
completeness of a nature clothed in armour that rendered it impregnable.
It was a strange thing that man should have the power to put the
finishing touch to God's work, that religion should stoop to be a
handmaid to faith in a human being, but she did not think it strange.
Everything in life seemed to her to be in perfect accord because her
heart was in perfect accord with another heart.
And she welcomed the storm. She even welcomed something else that came
to her now in the storm: the memory of the sand-diviner's tortured
face as he gazed down, reading her fate in the sand. For what was an
untroubled fate? Surely a life that crept along the hollows and had no
impulse to call it to the heights. Knowing the flawless perfection of
her armour she had a wild longing to prove it. She wished that there
should be assaults upon her love, because she knew she could resist
them one and all, and she wished to have the keen joy of resisting them.


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