“I know so well what it hides that I imagine I actually see the desert. One loves one’s kind, assiduous liar. Isn’t it so?”
“The imagination? But perhaps I am not disposed to allow that it is a liar.”
“Who knows? You may be right.”
He looked at her kindly with his bright eyes. It had not seem to strike him that their conversation was curiously intimate, considering that they were strangers to one another, that he did not even know her name. Domini wondered suddenly how old he was. That look made him seem much older than he had seemed before. There was such an expression in his eyes as may sometimes be seen in eyes that look at a child who is kissing a rag doll with deep and determined affection. “Kiss your doll!” they seemed to say. “Put off the years when you must know that dolls can never return a kiss.”
“I begin to see the desert now,” Domini said after a moment of silent walking. “How wonderful it is!”
“Yes, it is. The most wonderful thing in Nature. You will think it much more wonderful when you fancy you know it well.”
“Fancy!”
“I don’t think anyone can ever really know the desert. It is the thing that keeps calling, and does not permit one to draw near.”
“But then, one might learn to hate it.”
“I don’t think so. Truth does just the same, you know. And yet men keep on trying to draw near.”