She said it because she felt as if it was already understood by her companion.
Count Anteoni took down his arm from the white wall and pulled a branch of the purple flowers slowly towards him through the doorway.
“There is peace—what is generally called so, at least—in Beni-Mora,” he answered rather slowly and meditatively. “That is to say, there is similarity of day with day, night with night. The sun shines untiringly over the desert, and the desert always hints at peace.”
He let the flowers go, and they sprang softly back, and hung quivering in the space beyond his thin figure. Then he added:
“Perhaps one should not say more than that.”
“No.”
Domini sat down for a moment. She looked up at him with her direct eyes and at the shaking flowers. The sound of Larbi’s flute was always in her ears.
“But may not one think, feel a little more?” she asked.
“Oh, why not? If one can, if one must? But how? Africa is as fierce and full of meaning as a furnace, you know.”
“Yes, I know—already,” she replied.