He could not take his eyes from her as she stood at the window, the reflected light of the sunset in her face, her well-proportioned figure seeming to be more vigorous, more athletic, than he had known it before. Her smile, always brilliant, was now intoxicating to him; and her eyes were filled with such tenderness that he could find no adequate response to their appeal. It was as though his kisses and his words of love were all insufficient to this great hour; and, with inward, joyous laughter, he found himself baffled in his search for means of expression.
He lifted her up in his arms, and kissed her throat and her shoulders and her knees. He lowered her to her feet again, and, with his arm about her, walked half-way across the room and back. He buried his face in her hair; held her hand to his mouth and kissed her fingers one by one; he sat her in a deck-chair, and, kneeling before her, laid his head for a moment upon her lap.
She was his, she belonged to him!—the thought went coursing through his brain in headlong career, breaking down his reserve, overthrowing the walls of the citadel of his being.
At last, forcing himself down from the heights to the practicalities, he went to the door and shouted for tea; but Hussein, who, like most loyal Egyptian servants, regarded himself, with due deference, as ibn el bêt, “son of the house,” or “one of the family” as we should say, had thrown himself whole-heartedly into his master’s excitement, and had already prepared the tea and had opened the choicest tin of biscuits in the store-cupboard.
Muriel was hungry after her long ride; but she had so much to say, and the interruptions induced by their love were so frequent, that the meal occupied a great deal of time. She told him of the journey from Egypt, and of the wonders of the desert which had been revealed to her; she spoke of the bath that day in the pool at the roadside; she described her sensations of increasing happiness and well-being as day by day the old routine of her life had slipped further from her; and she talked with enthusiasm of the beauties of El Hamrân as she had approached it just now from the high ground.
“I spotted this old ruin of yours from miles away,” she said, “and we skirted along the high ground on this side of the Oasis until we came without a single wrong turning to your door.”
She went to the window, and, standing there with her arm linked in his, gazed in silence over the shimmering sea of the tree-tops. Upon the near side the shadow of the cliffs was spread, and the foliage seemed here to be tinged with cobalt and purple; but on the far side the mellow light of the vanishing sun still bathed the green of the leaves with a tincture of gold and copper.
The chirping of thousands of sparrows, as they gathered themselves in the branches to roost, filled the air with clamorous sound; and at the foot of the cliff, just below the window, a string of camels went by, the foremost being ridden by a small boy, dressed in a single garment of blue cotton, who was exultantly carolling a native song in a full-throated voice which, with its chucks and gurgles, seemed to be an imitation of the nightingale.
“What is he singing about?” Muriel asked. “He’s nearly bursting with it.”
“It is a part of the story of Leila and her lover Majnûn,” Daniel explained, after listening for a few moments; “the part where the Sultan sees Leila, and tells Majnûn that he doesn’t think she is anything to write home about; and Majnûn says: ‘O King, if you could only see her from the window of Majnûn’s eyes, the miracle of her beauty would be made known to you.’”