This track
was presently lost in the blanched plains. Far away, immeasurably far,
sea and snow blended and faded into the cloudy grey. Above the near
dunes two desert eagles were slowly wheeling in a weary flight,
occasionally sinking towards the sand, then rising again towards the
clouds. And the track was strewn with the bleached bones of camels that
had perished, or that had been slaughtered, on some long desert march.
To the left of them the solitary tower commanded this terrific vision
of desolation, seemed to watch it steadily, yet furtively, with its tiny
loophole eyes.
"We have come into winter," Domini murmured.
She looked at the white of the camels' bones, of the plains, at the grey
white of the sky, at the yellow pallor of the dunes.
"How wonderful! How terrible!" she said.
She drew her horse to one side, a little nearer to Androvsky's.
"Does the Russian in you greet this land?" she asked him.
He did not reply. He seemed to be held in thrall by the sad immensity
before them.
"I realise here what it must be to die in the desert, to be killed by
it--by hunger, by thirst in it," she said presently, speaking, as if to
herself, and looking out over the mirage sea, the mirage snow.
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