And
beneath these voices of living things, foundation of their uprising
vitality, pulsed barbarous music, the throbbing tomtoms that are for
ever heard in the lands of the sun, fetish music that suggests fatalism,
and the grand monotony of the enormous spaces, and the crude passion
that repeats itself, and the untiring, sultry loves and the untired,
sultry languors of the children of the sun.
The silence of the sands, which Domini and Androvsky had known and
loved, was merged in the tumult of the sands. The one had been mystical,
laying the soul to rest. The other was provocative, calling the soul to
wake. At this moment the sands themselves seemed to stir with life and
to cry aloud with voices.
"The very sky is barbarous to-night!" Domini exclaimed. "Did you ever
see such colour, Boris?"
"Over the minarets it is like a great wound," he answered.
"No wonder men are careless of human life in such a land as this. All
the wildness of the world seems to be concentrated here. Amara is like
the desert city of some tremendous dream. It looks wicked and unearthly,
but how superb!"
"Look at those cupolas!" he said.
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