“Don’t you wish you were going out?” he said. “Out into that?” And he pointed with his whip towards the dreamlike blue of the far horizon. She leaned over, looking down at him and at his horse, which fidgeted and arched his white neck and dropped foam from his black flexible lips.
“No,” she answered after a moment of thought. “I must speak the truth, you know.”
“To me, always.”
“I feel that you were right, that my summons has not yet come to me.”
“And when it comes?”
“I shall obey it without fear, even if I go in the storm and the darkness.”
He glanced at the radiant sky, at the golden beams slanting down upon the palms.
“The Coran says: ‘The fate of every man have We bound about his neck.’ May yours be as serene, as beautiful, as a string of pearls.”
“But I have never cared to wear pearls,” she answered.
“No? What are your stones?”