"I don"t believe they are so different from one another as the garden and the desert."
She looked at him directly.
"It would be too ironical."
"But nothing is," the Count said.
"You have discovered that in this garden?"
"Ah, it is new to you, Madame!"
For the first time there was a sound of faint bitterness in his voice.
"One often discovers the saddest thing in the loveliest place," he added. "There you begin to see the desert."
Far away, at the small orifice of the tunnel of trees down which they were walking, appeared a glaring patch of fierce and quivering sunlight.
"I can only see the sun," Domini said.
"I know so well what it hides that I imagine I actually see the desert.
One loves one"s kind, a.s.siduous liar. Isn"t it so?"
"The imagination? But perhaps I am not disposed to allow that it is a liar."
"Who knows? You may be right."
He looked at her kindly with his bright eyes. It had not seem to strike him that their conversation was curiously intimate, considering that they were strangers to one another, that he did not even know her name.
Domini wondered suddenly how old he was. That look made him seem much older than he had seemed before. There was such an expression in his eyes as may sometimes be seen in eyes that look at a child who is kissing a rag doll with deep and determined affection. "Kiss your doll!"
they seemed to say. "Put off the years when you must know that dolls can never return a kiss."
"I begin to see the desert now," Domini said after a moment of silent walking. "How wonderful it is!"
"Yes, it is. The most wonderful thing in Nature. You will think it much more wonderful when you fancy you know it well."
"Fancy!"
"I don"t think anyone can ever really know the desert. It is the thing that keeps calling, and does not permit one to draw near."
"But then, one might learn to hate it."
"I don"t think so. Truth does just the same, you know. And yet men keep on trying to draw near."
"But sometimes they succeed."
"Do they? Not when they live in gardens."
He laughed for the first time since they had been together, and all his face was covered with a network of little moving lines.
"One should never live in a garden, Madame."
"I will try to take your word for it, but the task will be difficult."
"Yes? More difficult, perhaps, when you see what lies beside my thoughts of truth."
As he spoke they came out from the tunnel and were seized by the fierce hands of the sun. It was within half an hour of noon, and the radiance was blinding. Domini put up her parasol sharply, like one startled. She stopped.
"But how tremendous!" she exclaimed.
Count Anteoni laughed again, and drew down the brim of his grey hat over his eyes. The hand with which he did it was almost as burnt as an Arab"s.
"You are afraid of it?"
"No, no. But it startled me. We don"t know the sun really in Europe."
"No. Not even in Southern Italy, not even in Sicily. It is fierce there in summer, but it seems further away. Here it insists on the most intense intimacy. If you can bear it we might sit down for a moment?"
"Please."
All along the edge of the garden, from the villa to the boundary of Count Anteoni"s domain, ran a straight high wall made of earth bricks hardened by the sun and topped by a coping of palm wood painted white.
This wall was some eight feet high on the side next to the desert, but the garden was raised in such a way that the inner side was merely a low parapet running along the sand path. In this parapet were cut small seats, like window-seats, in which one could rest and look full upon the desert as from a little cliff. Domini sat down on one of them, and the Count stood by her, resting one foot on the top of the wall and leaning his right arm on his knee.
"There is the world on which I look for my hiding-place," he said. "A vast world, isn"t it?"
Domini nodded without speaking.
Immediately beneath them, in the narrow shadow of the wall, was a path of earth and stones which turned off at the right at the end of the garden into the oasis. Beyond lay the vast river bed, a chaos of hot boulders bounded by ragged low earth cliffs, interspersed here and there with small pools of gleaming water. These cliffs were yellow. From their edge stretched the desert, as Eternity stretches from the edge of Time.
Only to the left was the immeasurable expanse intruded upon by a long spur of mountains, which ran out boldly for some distance and then stopped abruptly, conquered and abashed by the imperious flats. Beneath the mountains were low, tent-like, cinnamon-coloured undulations, which reminded Domini of those made by a shaken-out sheet, one smaller than the other till they melted into the level. The summits of the most distant mountains, which leaned away as if in fear of the desert, were dark and mistily purple. Their flanks were iron grey at this hour, flecked in the hollows with the faint mauve and pink which became carnation colour when the sun set.
Domini scarcely looked at them. Till now she had always thought that she loved mountains. The desert suddenly made them insignificant, almost mean to her. She turned her eyes towards the flat s.p.a.ces. It was in them that majesty lay, mystery, power, and all deep and significant things.
In the midst of the river bed, and quite near, rose a round and squat white tower with a small cupola. Beyond it, on the little cliff, was a tangle of palms where a tiny oasis sheltered a few native huts. At an immense distance, here and there, other oases showed as dark stains show on the sea where there are hidden rocks. And still farther away, on all hands, the desert seemed to curve up slightly like a shallow wine-hued cup to the misty blue horizon line, which resembled a faintly seen and mysterious tropical sea, so distant that its sultry murmur was lost in the embrace of the intervening silence.
An Arab pa.s.sed on the path below the wall. He did not see them. A white dog with curling lips ran beside him. He was singing to himself in a low, inward voice. He went on and turned towards the oasis, still singing as he walked slowly.
"Do you know what he is singing?" the Count asked.
Domini shook her head. She was straining her ears to hear the melody as long as possible.
"It is a desert song of the freed negroes of Touggourt--"No one but G.o.d and I knows what is in my heart.""
Domini lowered her parasol to conceal her face. In the distance she could still hear the song, but it was dying away.
"Oh! what is going to happen to me here?" she thought.
Count Anteoni was looking away from her now across the desert. A strange impulse rose up in her. She could not resist it. She put down her parasol, exposing herself to the blinding sunlight, knelt down on the hot sand, leaned her arms on the white parapet, put her chin in the upturned palms of her hands and stared into the desert almost fiercely.
"No one but G.o.d and I knows what is in my heart," she thought. "But that"s not true, that"s not true. For I don"t know."
The last echo of the Arab"s song fainted on the blazing air. Surely it had changed now. Surely, as he turned into the shadows of the palms, he was singing, "No one but G.o.d knows what is in my heart." Yes, he was singing that. "No one but G.o.d--no one but G.o.d."