With each
moment the heat of the sun grew more intense. The wind had gone. It was
difficult to believe that it had ever roared over the desert. A little
way from them the camel-drivers squatted beside the beasts, eating flat
loaves of yellow bread, and talking together in low, guttural voices.
The guard dogs roamed round them, uneasily hungry. In the distance,
before a tent of patched rags, a woman, scantily clad in bright red
cotton, was suckling a child and staring at the caravan.
Domini and Androvsky scarcely spoke as they ate. Once she said:
"Do you realise that this is a wedding breakfast?"
She was thinking of the many wedding receptions she had attended in
London, of crowds of smartly-dressed women staring enviously at
tiaras, and sets of jewels arranged in cases upon tables, of brides and
bridegrooms, looking flushed and anxious, standing under canopies of
flowers and forcing their tired lips into smiles as they replied to
stereotyped congratulations, while detectives--poorly disguised as
gentlemen--hovered in the back-ground to see that none of the presents
mysteriously disappeared. Her presents were the velvety roses in the
earthen vases, the breezes of the desert, the sand humps, the yellow
butterflies, the silence that lay around like a blessing pronounced
by the God who made the still places where souls can learn to know
themselves and their great destiny.
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