DAWN
In the silvery light of a soft grey dawn, while morning's face was
still gently veiled, two camels stood with heads towards Khartoum, and
as the first rosy shaft of light quivered in the sky Regina came to
the door of her tent and looked out with glad and joyous eyes. She was
very pale from her long seclusion, but tall and straight and supple as
always. Uninjured, undisfigured, with the power restored to her right
arm, she stood on the golden sanded floor, under the high arched roof
of the sky, rejoicing in the life given back to her.
That day they would commence the return journey by very easy stages,
only travelling a little in the cool of the evening and the dawn so
as not to fatigue her, and she looked out on the great sandy space
over which they had to travel fearlessly, eager to brave its dangers
and pierce its mysteries, and even as the desert stretched before her
uncertain, unknown, full of radiant mist, so lay her future uncertain,
unknown, but gleaming brightly, calling her to it. Her marriage at
Khartoum, and then maternity, with all its complex pains and cares,
but she dreaded nothing. She was ready always to meet life and wrestle
with it, and she would always conquer, for of such stuff are life's
conquerors made. Overhead the sky gleamed like the inner shell of an
oyster, in marvellous tones of palest green and rose, iridescent like
mother of pearl, and in slow magnificence, in dazzling gold, the sun
appeared over the rim of the earth.
Just at that moment Everest came to the tent door and stood by her, and
the east flung its glory over them both, irradiating their faces in
glowing light.
"It is the springtime now," murmured Regina softly. "I wish we could be
in the enchanted garden again together in a dawn like this."
"I do not mind where I am as long as you are with me," he answered,
drawing her close to him. "Love like yours makes of the whole world an
enchanted garden."
And as she heard his words the glory of the dawn was not greater than
the glory in her eyes.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Night of Temptation, by Victoria Cross