For a moment, a hideous moment, she felt as if he personified
Beni-Mora, as if this smile were Beni-Mora's farewell to her and to
Androvsky.
And Irena was dancing at Onargla, far away in the desert.
She remembered the night in the dancing-house, Irena's attack upon Hadj.
That love of Africa was at an end. Was not everything at an end? Yet
Larbi still played upon his flute in the garden of Count Anteoni, still
played the little tune that was as the _leit motif_ of the eternal
renewal of life. And within herself she carried God's mystery of
renewal, even she, with her numbed mind, her tired heart. She, too, was
to help to carry forward the banner of life.
She had come to Beni-Mora in the sunset, and now, in the sunset, she was
leaving it. But she did not lean from the carriage window to watch the
pageant that was flaming in the west. Instead, she shut her eyes
and remembered it as it was on that evening when they, who now were
journeying away from the desert together, had been journeying towards it
together. Strangers who had never spoken to each other. And the evening
came, and the train stole into the gorge of El-Akbara, and still she
kept her eyes closed.
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