"Don't you know what the Arabs call the desert?"
"No. What do they call it?"
"The Garden of Allah."
"The Garden of Allah!" he repeated.
There was a sound like fear in his voice. Even her great joy did not
prevent her from noticing it, and she remembered, with a thrill of pain,
where and under what circumstances she had first heard the Arab's name
for the desert.
Could it be that this man she loved was secretly afraid of something in
the desert, some influence, some--? Her thought stopped short, like a
thing confused.
"Don't you think it a very beautiful name?" she asked, with an almost
fierce longing to be reassured, to be made to know that he, like her,
loved the thought that God was specially near to those who travelled in
this land of solitude.
"Is it beautiful?"
"To me it is. It makes me feel as if in the desert I were specially
watched over and protected, even as if I were specially loved there."
Suddenly Androvsky put his arm round her and strained her to him.
"By me! By me!" he said. "Think of me to-night, only of me, as I think
only of you."
He spoke as if he were jealous even of her thought of God, as if he did
not understand that it was the very intensity of her love for him that
made her, even in the midst of the passion of the body, connect
their love of each other with God's love of them.
Pages:
574
575
576
577
578
579
580
581
582
583
584
585
586
587
588
589
590
591
592
593
594
595
596
597
598