"That is what I found," she said.
3
Presently she shut the door of the forward room with quick hand—her face remorseful and tender.
"I don't know why I did that. It was hateful to do that—and before you. I don't know why I did it."
"You had to," he said. "I listened so intently, you had to tell me. You could not tell one more ready to understand and help you."
"But he is not always like that—not always like to-night and that night. There have been many days ... oh, but he is not what I expected—so different from when he left Odessa. But very kind, always kind. To-morrow morning he will be kind enough. Only such a desolation comes over me out of his soul. It is like the desert.... And nothing I can do changes him. I have ceased trying to change him, ceased trying, ceased hoping—"
"Some men can't stand the desert," Romney said. "One must bring a certain integration of force, a certain resistance, to stand it here. The Gobi saps the vitality of the weak; it often takes the sanity of men who do not drink.... Your brother does not know what comes over him. He feels himself going insane, that's all. A man drinks, when he feels that, if he's the kind that turns to drink.... You had to tell me. It's lucky I came. I wouldn't have failed to come—not for worlds. Perhaps I came to take you away—"
... Her fineness appeared only to one who had the grace to see. Romney, surprised at his own words, sensed vast reaches in her, depths that defied him, something of the newness of new Russia and hues of beauty ancient as Asia. Her eyes had widened, making her face the more fragile. Just then he saw the rising moon through a low pane behind her. It was in the full and still red from the horizon. The glass was poor, distorting the circle so that it was like a bulging grain bag.... She had not smiled, nor taken exception to his words. There was no coquetry in her. She waited for him to explain.
"You have seen all the terror and the oppression of the desert. You cannot have failed to see something of the rest," he suggested.
She paused and he added, "Something that has to do perhaps with that old Buddhist holy man you spoke of so kindly."