“I spoke to you before, but you didn’t hear,” said Adam. “You looked sort of, well—watchful, I’d call it.”
“Watchful? Yes, I was. I feel I was, but I don’t remember. This is indeed a strange state for Magdalene Virey. It behooves her to cultivate it. But what kind of a state was it?... Wansfell, could it have been happiness?”
She asked that in a whisper, serious, and with pathos, yet with a smile.
“It’s always happiness for me to watch from the heights. Surely you are finding happy moments?”
“Yes, many, thanks to you, my friend. But they are conscious happy moments, just sheer joy of movement, or sight of beauty, or a thrill of hope, or perhaps a vague dream of old, far-off, unhappy things. And it is happiness to remember them.... But this was different. It was unconscious. I tell you, Wansfell, I did not have a thought in my mind! I saw—I watched. Oh, how illusive it is!”
“Try to recall it,” he suggested, much interested.
“I try—I try,” she said, presently, “but the spell is broken.”
“Well, then, let me put a thought into your mind,” went on Adam. “Dismukes and I once had a long talk about the desert. Why does it fascinate all men? What is the secret? Dismukes didn’t rate himself high as a thinker. But he is a thinker. He knows the desert. To me he’s great. And he and I agreed that the commonly accepted idea of the desert’s lure is wrong. Men seek gold, solitude, forgetfulness. Some wander for the love of wandering. Others seek to hide from the world. Criminals are driven to the desert. Besides these, all travelers crossing the desert talk of its enchantments. They all have different reasons. Loneliness, peace, silence, beauty, wonder, sublimity—a thousand reasons! Indeed, they are all proofs of the strange call of the desert. But these men do not go deep enough.”
“Have you solved the secret?” she asked, wonderingly.
“No, not yet,” he replied, a little sadly. “It eludes me. It’s like finding the water of the mirage.”