Night had fallen over the desert, a clear purple night, starry but without a moon. Around the Bordj, and before a Cafe Maure built of brown earth and palm-wood, opposite to it, the Arabs who were halting to sleep at Arba on their journeys to and from Beni-Mora were huddled, sipping coffee, playing dominoes by the faint light of an oil lamp, smoking cigarettes and long pipes of keef. Within the court of the Bordj the mules were feeding tranquilly in rows. The camels roamed the plain among the tamarisk bushes, watched over by shrouded shadowy guardians sleepless as they were. The mountains, the palms of Beni-Mora, were lost in the darkness that lay over the desert.
On the low hill, at some distance beyond the white tent of Domini and Androvsky, the obscurity was lit up fiercely by the blaze of a huge fire of brushwood, the flames of which towered up towards the stars, flickering this way and that as the breeze took them, and casting a wild illumination upon the wild faces of the rejoicing desert men who were gathered about it, telling stories of the wastes, singing songs that were melancholy and remote to Western ears, even though they hymned past victories over the infidels, or passionate ecstasies of love in the golden regions of the sun. The steam from bowls of cous- cous and stews of mutton and vegetables curled up to join the thin smoke that made a light curtain about this fantasia, and from time to time, with a shrill cry of exultation, a half-naked form, all gleaming eyes and teeth and polished bronze-hued limbs, rushed out of the blackness beyond the fire, leaped through the tongues of flame and vanished like a spectre into the embrace of the night.
All the members of the caravan, presided over by Batouch in glory, were celebrating the wedding night of their master and mistress.
Domini and Androvsky had already visited them by their bonfire, had received their compliments, watched the sword dance and the dance of the clubs, touched with their lips, or pretended to touch, the stem of a keef, listened to a marriage song warbled by Ali to the accompaniment of a flute and little drums, and applauded Ouardi's agility in leaping through the flames. Then, with many good-nights, pressures of the hand, and auguries for the morrow, they had gone away into the cool darkness, silently towards their tent.
They walked slowly, a little apart from each other. Domini looked up at the stars and saw among them the star of Liberty. Androvsky looked at her and saw all the stars in her face. When they reached the tent door they stopped on the warm earth. A lamp was lit within, casting a soft light on the simple furniture and on the whiteness of the two beds, above one of which Domini imagined, though from without she could not see, the wooden crucifix Androvsky had once worn in his breast.
"Shall we stay here a little?" Domini said in a low voice. "Out here?"
There was a long pause. Then Androvsky answered:
"Yes. Let us feel it all--all. Let us feel it to the full."
He caught hold of her hand with a sort of tender roughness and twined his fingers between hers, pressing his palm against hers.
"Don't let us miss anything to-night," he said. "All my life is to-night. I've had no life yet. To-morrow--who knows whether we shall be dead to-morrow? Who knows? But we're alive to-night, flesh and blood, heart and soul. And there's nothing here, there can be nothing here to take our life from us, the life of our love to-night. For we're out in the desert, we're right away from anyone, everything.
We're in the great freedom. Aren't we, Domini? Aren't we?"
"Yes," she said. "Yes."
He took her other hand in the same way. He was facing her, and he held his hands against his heart with hers in them, then pressed her hands against her heart, then drew them back again to his.
"Then let us realise it. Let us forget our prison. Let us forget everything, everything that we ever knew before Beni-Mora, Domini.
It's dead, absolutely dead, unless we make it live by thinking. And that's mad, crazy. Thought's the great madness. Domini, have you forgotten everything before we knew each other?"
"Yes," she said. "Now--but only now. You've made me forget it all."
There was a deep breathing under her voice. He held up her hands to his shoulders and looked closely into her eyes, as if he were trying to send all himself into her through those doors of the soul opened to seeing him. And now, in this moment, she felt that her fierce desire was realised, that he was rising above her on eagle's wings. And as on the night before the wedding she had blessed all the sorrows of her life, now she blessed silently all the long silence of Androvsky, all his strange reticence, his uncouthness, his avoidance of her in the beginning of their acquaintance. That which had made her pain by being, now made her joy by having been and being no more. The hidden man was rushing forth to her at last in his love. She seemed to hear in the night the crash of a great obstacle, and the voice of the flood of waters that had broken it down at length and were escaping into liberty. His silence of the past now made his speech intensely beautiful and wonderful to her. She wanted to hear the waters more intensely, more intensely.
"Speak to me," she said. "You've spoken so little. Do you know how little? Tell me all you are. Till now I've only felt all you are. And that's so much, but not enough for a woman--not enough. I've taken you, but now--give me all I've taken. Give--keep on giving and giving.
From to-night to receive will be my life. Long ago I've given all I had to you. Give to me, give me everything. You know I've given all."
"All?" he said, and there was a throb in his deep voice, as if some intense feeling rose from the depths of him and shook it.
"Yes, all," she whispered. "Already--and long ago--that day in the garden. When I--when I put my hands against your forehead--do you remember? I gave you all, for ever."
And as she spoke she bent down her face with a sort of proud submission and put her forehead against his heart.
