There was a sternness in his voice now, a fiery intention.

“I understand,” she said.  “I have forgotten them too, but not some things.”

“Which?”

“Not that night when you took me out of the dancing-house, not our ride to Sidi-Zerzour, not—­there are things I shall remember.  When I am dying, after I am dead, I shall remember them.”

The song faded away.  The torch was still, then fell downwards and became one with the fire.  Then Androvsky drew Domini down beside him on to the warm earth before the tent door, and held her hand in his against the earth.

“Feel it,” he said.  “It’s our home, it’s our liberty.  Does it feel alive to you?”

“Yes.”

“As if it had pulses, like the pulses in our hearts, and knew what we know?”

“Yes.  Mother Earth—­I never understood what that meant till to-night.”

“We are beginning to understand together.  Who can understand anything alone?”

He kept her hand always in his pressed against the desert as against a heart.  They both thought of it as a heart that was full of love and protection for them, of understanding of them.  Going back to their words before the song of Ali, he said: 

“Love burns up evil, then love can never be evil.”

“Not the act of loving.”

“Or what it leads to,” he said.

And again there was a sort of sternness in his voice, as if he were insisting on something, were bent on conquering some reluctance, or some voice contradicting.

“I know that you are right,” he added.

She did not speak, but—­why she did not know—­her thought went to the wooden crucifix fastened in the canvas of the tent close by, and for a moment she felt a faint creeping sadness in her.  But he pressed her hand more closely, and she was conscious only of these two warmths—–­of his hand above her hand and of the desert beneath it.  Her whole life seemed set in a glory of fire, in a heat that was life-giving, that dominated her and evoked at the same time all of power that was in her, causing her dormant fires, physical and spiritual, to blaze up as if they were sheltered and fanned.  The thought of the crucifix faded.  It was as if the fire destroyed it and it became ashes—­then nothing.  She fixed her eyes on the distant fire of the Arabs, which was beginning to die down slowly as the night grew deeper.

“I have doubted many things,” he said.  “I’ve been afraid.”

“You!” she said.

“Yes.  You know it.”

“How can I?  Haven’t I forgotten everything—­since that day in the garden?”

He drew up her hand and put it against his heart.

“I’m jealous of the desert even,” he whispered.  “I won’t let you touch it any more tonight.”

He looked into her eyes and saw that she was looking at the distant fire, steadily, with an intense eagerness.

“Why do you do that?” he said.