A SCENE FROM THE PHOTOPLAY—BURNING SANDS
Neither she nor he found any need of words, and for some time there was almost complete silence between them, so that one might have supposed the spell of the desert to have bewitched them. His hands idly played with the sand; and, as the grains ran between his fingers, she seemed to feel the memories of all her days slipping from her, until only this one little moment of the present remained.
“Well?” she asked at last, and there was the question of all the ages in her eyes.
“No man can escape his destiny,” he replied; but the words did not seem to be detached: rather they were the conclusion of a mute analysis to which they had both contributed.
Again there fell a silence between them, a silence, however, so filled with unspoken words that in it their relationship grew immeasurably more close. The glory of the sunset began to fade, and the veil of the twilight descended gently about them; but in their hearts it was dawn, and the sunrise was very near.
At length he arose and stretched his arms to their full extent. Muriel gazed up at him, wondering how he would choose to seal the compact which, so it seemed, had been made between them in this period of their silence. Suddenly she was conscious that her heart was beating fast, and its throbbing brought her back from her dream.
She sat up, and looked at him for a moment with fear in her eyes; for it was as though she had spoken words in the depths of her being which her tongue would have been too reticent to utter.
Daniel clasped his hands behind the back of his head, and stood watching her, a whimsical smile on his face. His expression was one of perplexity, almost of amusement at the incomprehensibility of Fate.
“Come,” he said, “we had better be going, Muriel, my dear.”