“It’s like the secret of a woman’s heart, Wansfell.”
“Then if that is so—tell me.”
“Ah! no woman ever tells that secret.”
“Have you come to love the desert?”
“You ask me that often,” she replied, in perplexity. “I don’t know. I—I reverence—I fear—I thrill. But love—I can’t say that I love the desert. Not yet. Love comes slowly and seldom to me. I loved my mother.... Once I loved a horse.”
“Have you loved men?” he queried.
“No!” she flashed, in sudden passion, and her eyes burned dark on his. “Do you imagine that of me?... I was eighteen when I—when they married me to Virey. I despised him. I learned to loathe him.... Wansfell, I never really loved any man. Once I was mad—driven!”
How easily could Adam strike the chords of her emotion and rouse her to impassioned speech! His power to do this haunted him, and sometimes he could not resist it until wistfulness or trouble in her eyes made him ashamed.
“Some day I’ll tell you how I was driven once—ruined,” he said.
“Ruined! You? Why, Wansfell, you are a man! Sometimes I think you’re a god of the desert!... But tell me—what ruined you, as you mean it?”