“Don’t you know what the Arabs call the desert?”
“No. What do they call it?”
“The Garden of Allah.”
“The Garden of Allah!” he repeated.
There was a sound like fear in his voice. Even her great joy did not prevent her from noticing it, and she remembered, with a thrill of pain, where and under what circumstances she had first heard the Arab’s name for the desert.
Could it be that this man she loved was secretly afraid of something in the desert, some influence, some—? Her thought stopped short, like a thing confused.
“Don’t you think it a very beautiful name?” she asked, with an almost fierce longing to be reassured, to be made to know that he, like her, loved the thought that God was specially near to those who travelled in this land of solitude.
“Is it beautiful?”
“To me it is. It makes me feel as if in the desert I were specially watched over and protected, even as if I were specially loved there.”
Suddenly Androvsky put his arm round her and strained her to him.