"Yes, I am happy. The world I used to know, my world and yours, would laugh at me, would say that I was crazy, that it was a whim, that I wished for a new sensation. Simply it had to be. For years I have been tending towards it--who knows why? Who knows what obscure influences have been at work in me, whether there is not perhaps far back, some faint strain of Arab blood mingled with the Sicilian blood in my veins? I cannot understand why. What I can understand is that at last I have fulfilled my destiny! After years of unrest I am suddenly and completely at peace. It is a magical sensation. I have been wandering all my life and have come upon the open door of my home."
He spoke very quietly, but she heard the joy in his voice.
"I remember you saying, 'I like to see men praying in the desert.'"
"Yes. When I looked at them I was longing to be one of them. For years from my garden wall I watched them with a passion of envy, with bitterness, almost with hatred sometimes. They had something I had not, something that set them above me, something that made their lives plain through any complication, and that gave to death a meaning like the meaning at the close of a great story that is going to have a sequel. They had faith. And it was difficult not to hate them. But now I am one of them. I can pray in the desert."
"That was why you left Beni-Mora."
"Yes. I had long been wishing to become a Mohammedan. I came here to be with the marabout, to enter more fully into certain questions, to see if I had any lingering doubts."
"And you have none?"
"None."
She looked at his bright eyes and sighed, thinking of her husband.
"You will go back to Beni-Mora?" she asked.
"I don't think so. I am inclined to go farther into the desert, farther among the people of my own faith. I don't want to be surrounded by French. Some day perhaps I may return. But at present everything draws me onward. Tell me"--he dropped the earnest tone in which he had been speaking, and she heard once more the easy, half- ironical man of the world--"do you think me a half-crazy eccentric?"
"No!"
"You look at me very gravely, even sadly."
"I was thinking of the men who cannot pray," she said, "even in the desert."
"They should not come into the Garden of Allah. Don't you remember that day by the garden wall, when--"
He suddenly checked himself.
"Forgive me," he said simply. "And now tell me about yourself. You never wrote that you were going to be married."
"I knew you would know it in time--when we met again."
"And you knew we should meet again?"
"Did not you?"
He nodded.
"In the heart of the desert. And you--where are you going? You are not returning to civilisation?"
"I don't know. I have no plans. I want to do what my husband wishes."
"And he?"
"He loves the desert. He has suggested our buying an oasis and setting up as date merchants. What do you think of the idea?"
She spoke with a smile, but her eyes were serious, even sad.
"I cannot judge for others," he answered.
When he got up to go he held her hand fast for a moment.
"May I speak what is in my heart?" he asked.
"Yes--do."
"I feel as if what I have told you to-day about myself, about my having come to the open door of a home I had long been wearily seeking, had made you sad. Is it so?"
"Yes," she answered frankly.
"Can you tell me why?"
"It has made me realise more sharply than perhaps I did before what must be the misery of those who are still homeless."
There was in her voice a sound as if she suppressed a sob.
"Hope for them, remembering my many years of wandering."
"Yes, yes."
"Good-bye."
"Will you come again?"
"You are here for long?"
