“Trust!” she scoffed. “You come to me and whisper to me of your wonderful desert, and the wonderful times we shall have there together; you tell me that I am your mate, your sweetheart; your chosen one: and all the time you are carrying on a liaison with a wretched woman in a back street.”
“Yes,” he answered, “and, believing that, you decide to have it out with me and then make it up. Oh, you sicken me! If I were to tell you the whole thing were nonsense, you wouldn’t believe me. You might even be disappointed. The tale would have been found to have no point: it wouldn’t be up to the standard of the stuff you read in your French novels.”
Muriel sat down upon the bench once more, and her hands fell listlessly to her sides. “I don’t think there’s any use in talking,” she murmured.
“No, none,” he answered. “I shall never get to the real you until you cut loose from all this. We belong at present to different worlds. I’m all at sea when I try to look at things from your point of view.”
“Very well, then,” she said. “Please take me back to the hotel. I shall be late for dinner.”
There was a complete silence between them as they made their way through the trees and along the gravel path towards the strongly-illuminated veranda. Through open doors the lounge could be seen, and here groups of visitors were gathering in readiness for dinner. The chatter of voices and little gusts of laughter came to their ears as they approached; and an elegant young man at the piano was lazily fingering the notes of Georges Hüe’s haunting J’ai pleuré en rêve.
Daniel paused at the steps of the veranda, but Muriel walked on, and, without turning her head, passed into the house. He stood for a moment, after she had gone, staring into the brightly lit room with dazed uncomprehending eyes: then he turned towards the desert, and presently was engulfed in the night.
[CHAPTER XXII—THE CALL OF THE DESERT]
As soon as Daniel arrived at the Residency next morning he sent a message to Lord Blair, asking that he might see him. He had hardly slept at all during the night, and his haggard face showed the ravages of his emotion.
Lying on his bed upon the rocks above his camp, he had striven to examine the entire situation with an impartial mind; and he would not admit that his philosophy had failed him. His reason strove to assert itself, and to quell the tumult of his tortured heart; and again and again he reminded himself that there was no such thing as sorrow of the soul. It was only his body that was miserable; and could he but manage to identify himself with the spiritual aspect of his entity, the pain of the material world would be forgotten in the serenity of his spirit. This was a first principle of his philosophy; and yet it seemed now to be utterly beyond his attainment.