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?'