Once again--why, she did not know--her
friend had made her feel guilty.
Andrea, the boatman, still paused. Now she saw him staring into her
face, and she felt like a woman publicly deserted, almost humiliated.
"Avanti, Andrea!" she said.
Her voice trembled as she spoke.
He bent to his oars and rowed on.
And man is the nomad, and the camel--and the desert.
Yes, she carried the desert within her, and she was wandering in it
alone. She saw herself, a poor, starved, shrinking figure, travelling
through a vast, a burning, a waterless expanse, with an iron sky above
her, a brazen land beneath. She was in rags, barefoot, like the
poorest nomad of them all.
But even the poorest nomad carries something.
Against her breast, to her heart, she clasped--a memory--the sacred
memory of him who had loved her, who had taken her to be his, who had
given her himself.
CHAPTER XX
That night when Hermione drew near to the island she saw the Saint's
light shining, and remembered how, in the storm, she had longed for it
--how, when she had seen it above the roaring sea, she had felt that
it was a good omen.
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