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Hichens, Robert Smythe, 1864-1950

"The Garden of Allah"

"
"Let it be night," he said. "Dark night!"
The horses moved slowly on, descending the hill on which stood the
bordj.
"Dark--dark night!" he said again.
She said nothing. They rode into the plain. When they were there he
said:
"Domini, do you understand--do you realise?"
"What, Boris?" she asked quietly.
"All that we are leaving to-day?"
"Yes, I understand."
"Are we--are we leaving it for ever?"
"We must not think of that."
"How can we help it? What else can we think of? Can one govern the
mind?"
"Surely, if we can govern the heart."
"Sometimes," he said, "sometimes I wonder----"
He looked at her. Something in her face made it impossible for him to
go on, to say what he had been going to say. But she understood the
unfinished sentence.
"If you can wonder, Boris," she said, "you don't know me, you don't know
me at all!"
"Domini," he said, "I don't wonder. But sometimes I understand your
strength, and sometimes it seems to me scarcely human, scarcely the
strength of a woman."
She lifted her whip and pointed to the dark shadow far away.
"I can just see the tower," she said.


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