Batouch’s thick lips curled with sarcasm.  He spat into the wind, blew his nose in his burnous, and answered: 

“You are a child, and can sing a pretty song, but—­”

Ali pointed with his delicate hand towards the south.

“Do you not see the light in the sky?”

Batouch stared before him, and perceived that there was in truth a lifting of the darkness beyond, a whiteness growing where the desert lay.

“As we come into the desert the wind will fall,” said Ali; and again he began to sing to himself: 

“Janat!  Janat!  Janat!”

Domini could not see the light in the south, and no premonition warned her of any coming abatement of the storm.  Once more she had begun to listen to the roaring of the wind and to wait for the larger voice of the desert, for the triumphant clarion of the sands that would announce to her her entry with Androvsky into the life of the wastes.  Again she personified the Sahara, but now more vividly than ever before.  In the obscurity she seemed to see it far away, like a great heroic figure, waiting for her and her passion, waiting in a region of gold and silken airs at the back of the tempest to crown her life with a joy wide as its dreamlike spaces, to teach her mind the inner truths that lie beyond the crowded ways of men and to open her heart to the most profound messages of Nature.

She listened, holding Androvsky’s hand, and she felt that he was listening too, with an intensity strong as her own, or stronger.  Presently his hand closed upon hers more tightly, almost hurting her physically.  As it did so she glanced up, but not at him, and noticed that the curtains of the palanquin were fluttering less fiercely.  Once, for an instant, they were almost still.  Then again they moved as if tugged by invisible hands; then were almost still once more.  At the same time the wind’s voice sank in her ears like a music dropping downward in a hollow place.  It rose, but swiftly sank a second time to a softer hush, and she perceived in the curtained enclosure a faintly growing light which enabled her to see, for the first time since she had left the church, her husband’s features.  He was looking at her with an expression of anticipation in which there was awe, and she realised that in her expectation of the welcome of the desert she had been mistaken.  She had listened for the sounding of a clarion, but she was to be greeted by a still, small voice.  She understood the awe in her husband’s eyes and shared it.  And she knew at once, with a sudden thrill of rapture, that in the scheme of things there are blessings and nobilities undreamed of by man and that must always come upon him with a glorious shock of surprise, showing him the poor faultiness of what he had thought perhaps his most magnificent imaginings.  Elisha sought for the Lord in the fire and in the whirlwind; but in the still, small voice onward came the Lord.