“Speak to me,” she said.  “You’ve spoken so little.  Do you know how little?  Tell me all you are.  Till now I’ve only felt all you are.  And that’s so much, but not enough for a woman—­not enough.  I’ve taken you, but now—­give me all I’ve taken.  Give—­keep on giving and giving.  From to-night to receive will be my life.  Long ago I’ve given all I had to you.  Give to me, give me everything.  You know I’ve given all.”

“All?” he said, and there was a throb in his deep voice, as if some intense feeling rose from the depths of him and shook it.

“Yes, all,” she whispered.  “Already—­and long ago—­that day in the garden.  When I—­when I put my hands against your forehead—­do you remember?  I gave you all, for ever.”

And as she spoke she bent down her face with a sort of proud submission and put her forehead against his heart.

The purity in her voice and in her quiet, simple action dazzled him like a flame shining suddenly in his eyes out of blackness.  And he, too, in that moment saw far up above him the beating of an eagle’s wings.  To each one the other seemed to be on high, and as both looked up that was their true marriage.

“I felt it,” he said, touching her hair with his lips.  “I felt it in your hands.  When you touched me that day it was as if you were giving me the world and the stars.  It frightened me to receive so much.  I felt as if I had no place to put my gift in.”

“Did your heart seem so small?” she said.

“You make everything I have and am seem small—­and yet great.  What does it mean?”

“That you are great, as I am, because we love.  No one is small who loves.  No one is poor, no one is bad, who loves.  Love burns up evil.  It’s the angel that destroys.”

Her words seemed to send through his whole body a quivering joy.  He took her face between his hands and lifted it from his heart.

“Is that true?  Is that true?” he said.  “I’ve—­I’ve tried to think that.  If you know how I’ve tried.”

“And don’t you know it is true?”

“I don’t feel as if I knew anything that you do not tell me to-night.  I don’t feel as if I have, or am, anything but what you give me, make me to-night.  Can you understand that?  Can you understand what you are to me?  That you are everything, that I have nothing else, that I have never had anything else in all these years that I have lived and that I have forgotten?  Can you understand it?  You said just now ’Speak to me, tell me all you are.’  That’s what I am, all I am, a man you have made a man.  You, Domini—­you have made me a man, you have created me.”

She was silent.  The intensity with which he spoke, the intensity of his eyes while he was speaking, made her hear those rushing waters as if she were being swept away by them.

“And you?” he said.  “You?”

“I?”

“This afternoon in the desert, when we were in the sand looking at Beni-Mora, you began to tell me something and then you stopped.  And you said, ‘I can’t tell you.  There’s too much light.’  Now the sun has gone.”