“Avanti!”
The boat slipped away and was lost in the darkness.
Hermione had said nothing. Once again—why, she did not know—her friend had made her feel guilty.
Andrea, the boatman, still paused. Now she saw him staring into her face, and she felt like a woman publicly deserted, almost humiliated.
“Avanti, Andrea!” she said.
Her voice trembled as she spoke.
He bent to his oars and rowed on.
And man is the nomad, and the camel—and the desert.
Yes, she carried the desert within her, and she was wandering in it alone. She saw herself, a poor, starved, shrinking figure, travelling through a vast, a burning, a waterless expanse, with an iron sky above her, a brazen land beneath. She was in rags, barefoot, like the poorest nomad of them all.
But even the poorest nomad carries something.