They spake no further, and pursued their journey toward the mountains and
across the desert that was as a sea asleep in the blazing heat, and the
sun till his setting threw no shade upon the sands bigger than what was
broad above them. By the beams of the growing moon they entered the first
gorge of the mountains. Here they relaxed the swiftness of their pace,
picking their way over broken rocks and stunted shrubs, and the mesh of
spotted creeping plants; all around them in shadow a freshness of noisy
rivulets and cool scents of flowers, asphodel and rose blooming in plots
from the crevices of the crags. These, as the troop advanced, wound and
widened, gradually receding, and their summits, which were silver in the
moonlight, took in the distance a robe of purple, and the sides of the
mountains were rounded away in purple beyond a space of emerald pasture.
Now, Ruark beheld the heaviness of Bhanavar, and that she drooped in her
seat, and he halted her by a cave at the foot of the mountains, browed
with white broom. Before it, over grass and cresses, ran a rill, a branch
from others, larger ones, that went hurrying from the heights to feed the
meadows below, and Bhanavar dipped her hand in the rill, and thought, 'I
am no more as thou, rill of the mountain, but a desert thing! Thy way is
forward, thy end before thee; but I go this way and that; my end is dark
to me; not a life is mine that will have its close kissing the cold
cheeks of the saffron-crocus. Cold art thou, and I--flames! They that
lean to thee are refreshed, they that touch me perish.' Then she looked
forth on the stars that were above the purple heights, and the blushes of
inner heaven that streamed up the sky, and a fear of meeting the eyes of
her kindred possessed her, and she cried out to Ruark, 'O Chief of the
Beni-Asser, must this be? and is there no help for it, but that I return
among them that look on me basely?'