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Hichens, Robert Smythe, 1864-1950

"The Garden of Allah"


"Don't let us look till we are far out," she said, "far away from
Beni-Mora."
He made no answer, but she saw that he understood all that was in her
heart. He leaned a little nearer to her and stretched out his arm as if
to put it round her. But he did not put it round her, and she knew why.
He was husbanding his great joy as she had husbanded the dark hours of
the previous night that to her were golden. And that unfinished action,
that impulse unfulfilled, showed her more clearly the depths of his
passion for her even than had the desperate clasp of his hands about
her knees in the garden. That which he did not do now was the greatest
assertion possible of all that he would do in the life that was before
them, and made her feel how entirely she belonged to him. Something
within her trembled like a poor child before whom is suddenly set the
prospect of a day of perfect happiness. She thought of the ending of
this day, of the coming of the evening. Always the darkness had parted
them; at the ending of this day it would unite them. In Androvsky's
eyes she read her thought of the darkness reflected, reflected and yet
changed, transmuted by sex.


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