Everything was forgotten as his arms held her fast in the night, everything except this great force of human love which was like iron, and yet soft about her, which was giving and wanting, which was concentrated upon her to the exclusion of all else, plunging the universe in darkness and setting her in light.
"There is nothing for me to-night but you," he said, crushing her in his arms. "The desert is your garden. To me it has always been your garden, only that, put here for you, and for me because you love me-- but for me only because of that."
The Arabs' fire was rapidly dying down.
"When it goes out, when it goes out!" Androvsky whispered it her ear.
His breath stirred the thick tresses of her hair.
"Let us watch it!" he whispered.
She pressed his hand but did not reply. She could not speak any more.
At last the something wild and lawless, the something that was more than passionate, that was hot and even savage in her nature, had risen up in its full force to face a similar force in him, which insistently called it and which it answered without shame.
"It is dying," Androvsky said. "It is dying. Look how small the circle of the flame is, how the darkness is creeping up about it! Domini--do you see?"
She pressed his hand again.
"Do you long for the darkness?" he asked. "Do you, Domini? The desert is sending it. The desert is sending it for you, and for me because you love me."
A log in the fire, charred by the flames, broke in two. Part of it fell down into the heart of the fire, which sent up a long tongue of red gold flame.
"That is like us," he said. "Like us together in the darkness."
She felt his body trembling, as if the vehemence of the spirit confined within it shook it. In the night the breeze slightly increased, making the flame of the lamp behind them in the tent flicker. And the breeze was like a message, brought to them from the desert by some envoy in the darkness, telling them not to be afraid of their wonderful gift of freedom with each other, but to take it open- handed, open-hearted, with the great courage of joy.
"Domini, did you feel that gust of the wind? It carried away a cloud of sparks from the fire and brought them a little way towards us. Did you see? Fire wandering on the wind through the night calling to the fire that is in us. Wasn't it beautiful? Everything is beautiful to-night. There were never such stars before."
She looked up at them. Often she had watched the stars, and known the vague longings, the almost terrible aspirations they wake in their watchers. But to her also they looked different to-night, nearer to the earth, she thought, brighter, more living than ever before, like strange tenderness made visible, peopling the night with an unconquerable sympathy. The vast firmament was surely intent upon their happiness. Again the breeze came to them across the waste, cool and breathing of the dryness of the sands. Not far away a jackal laughed. After a pause it was answered by another jackal at a distance. The voices of these desert beasts brought home to Domini with an intimacy not felt by her before the exquisite remoteness of their situation, and the shrill, discordant noise, rising and falling with a sort of melancholy and sneering mirth, mingled with bitterness, was like a delicate music in her ears.
"Hark!" Androvsky whispered.
The first jackal laughed once more, was answered again. A third beast, evidently much farther off, lifted up a faint voice like a dismal echo. Then there was silence.
"You loved that, Domini. It was like the calling of freedom to you-- and to me. We've found freedom; we've found it. Let us feel it. Let us take hold of it. It is the only thing, the only thing. But you can't know that as I do, Domini."
Again she was conscious that his intensity surpassed hers, and the consciousness, instead of saddening or vexing, made her thrill with joy.
"I am maddened by this freedom," he said; "maddened by it, Domini. I can't help--I can't--"