“No. What do they want with it? They live out here in the sun and go in to sleep.”
Life simplified to this extent made her smile. Yet she looked at the squatting figures in the gaudy cotton rags with a stirring of envy. The memory of her long and complicated London years, filled with a multitude of so-called pleasures which had never stifled the dull pain set up in her heart by the rude shock of her mother’s sin and its result, made this naked, sunny, barbarous existence seem desirable. She stood for a moment to watch two women sorting grain for cous-cous. Their guttural laughter, their noisy talk, the quick and energetic movements of their busy black hands, reminded her of children’s gaiety. And Nature rose before her in the sunshine, confronting artifice and the heavy languors of modern life in cities. How had she been able to endure the yoke so long?
“Will Madame take me to London with her when she returns?” said Batouch, slyly.
“I am not going back to London for a very long time,” she replied with energy.
“You will stay here many weeks?”
“Months, perhaps. And perhaps I shall travel on into the desert. Yes, I must do that.”
“If we followed the white road into the desert, and went on and on for many days, we should come at last to Tombouctou,” said Batouch. “But very likely we should be killed by the Touaregs. They are fierce and they hate strangers.”
“Would you be afraid to go?” Domini asked him, curiously.
“Why afraid?”
“Of being killed?”