ing
blindly.

"Take me into thy arms, beloved, and carry me to the desert sand, for
behold, thy will is my will and my ways are henceforth thy ways! But
hasten! for the moment is at hand. Hold me in thy strength for I
faint!"

Tenderly the great man stooped and gathered the girl to his breast.
Swiftly he crossed the threshold, and passing through the gate gently
laid her down upon his mantle, stretched upon the ground.

* * * * * *

The wind of dawn blew the stars out one by one, the great plains of
sand changed from purple to steel, to grey, to yellow.

The palms whispered gently together, the water sang on its swift way to
the river, a faint movement everywhere heralded the coming of the day.

Motionless, Hahmed knelt beside Jill, whose snow-white face,
half-ridden in the folds of cloth, looked like some faint spring flower
in a world of shadows.

And then, as the woman whose unbound hair rippled in golden streams
about the Arab's feet, put out her hands to grasp her master's robe, a
long-drawn cry which spoke of pain and joy, death and ecstasy and Life,
crept over the sands, rising, rising to the very heavens, to sink back
in faintest moan to her who in that moment had fulfilled the miracle of
Love.

A hush fell upon the earth, a mighty stillness upon those two.

And then!

A little sound, soft as a bird's call at dawn, broke the silence of the
sands!

And at the little sound the man sprang upright, with hands and blazing
eyes upraised to heaven.

And as he stood towering over the motionless woman at his feet, the
sound of rejoicing was great in the land; for over the yellow sand,
tearing apart the last dim shadows of the night, up struck the sun's
first golden shaft, and as it spread, piling gold upon red, and red
upon gold, across the great plains and up to the very highest of high
heaven thundered the Mohammedan's tumultuous, triumphant hymn of praise.

"_La Allah, illa Allah! Muhammed rasul Allah!_"

THE END

[Transcriber's note: The word "Amourers" in Chapter XXXIII should
probably be "Armourers" (weapon makers).]

[Transcriber's note: In the "La Allah" line above, two characters are
supported only in Unicode. They are the second "a" in "Allah" and the
"a" in "illa", both of which should be a-macron (U+0101), and the "u"
in "rasul", which should be u-macron (U+016B).]

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Desert Love, by Joan Conquest

**