OCR Text |
Show of red carne out on her delicate cheeks and her eyes shone. Without saying another word she walked on again. And as she walked she thought that her desire of the desert had increased. Now that she was not to know the desert, it seemed to her that it was the one thing which she longed to know. Bencha§.lal kept close beside her as the gorge narrowed. He read her feelings, marked his success. But he was too clever to dwell upon Sir Claude. Instead he turned to another subject. He spoke of the desert, of the strange life there, of the freedom, the adventure, the passion. And he spoke sincerely, for he loved his horne, although, like many Arabs, he loved also the vices of cities now that he had begun to know them. He strove to kindle a blaze in the imagination of the woman beside him, "" a blaze that would rival the blaze of those diamonds which hung at her neck, moving as she moved, sparkling in the moonlight. They had given a mysterious impetus to his desire which no one not an Oriental could have comprehended. He connected them with their wearer, their brilliance with the brilliance of her angry eyes, their fairness with the fairness of her face, their glitter with the glitter of her hair. In his mind he compared her to a jewel, to a chain of jewels. And as he longed for them he longed for her. He desired to take them into his hands and to take her into his heart. And he spoke like one ;,, of the Goblin men of Goblin market. ~:';~' And she listened as to the voice of a/ Goblin man. ~ "Ah !" he exclaimed, at last. "If 1 you were not going to-morrow! Go- . ing back to England!" "Perhaps I shall not go," she said. |