I had
hoped that you'd remember me and be willing to introduce me to your
friend." He turned a cynical and evil glance upon Seagreave, who was
talking to some one a few feet away. "But since you won't, I'll go, just
adding that you and your friend, there, are likely to meet me soon
again."
There was a touch of scorn in Flick's faint smile. "The three minutes
are up," he said, and without a word Hanson turned and sought his seat.
The curtains parted now and Hugh again sat down to the piano, but his
music had changed; it was no longer sensuous and provocative, but
strange, and curiously disturbing, with a peculiar, recurring,
monotonous beat.
It was the voice of the desert full of a savage exultation in its own
loneliness and forsaken isolation, and through it rang a cry of deep,
disdainful triumph, as if it said: "All puny races of men, come to me;
embroider my vast surfaces with the green of your fields and gardens,
build your houses upon my quiescent sand and dream that you have
conquered and tamed me. And I abide, I abide. Silent, brooding,
unwitting of your noisy incursions, I lie absorbed in my dream under my
own illimitable skies. But soon or late, when the moment comes, I wake,
I rouse, I see my inviolate desolations invaded. Then I gather my
strength, I drown you with my torrential rivers, I torture you with my
burning sun, I obliterate you with my flying sand. So shall my cactus
bloom once more, my jeweled lizards crawl unmolested and the cry of the
coyote echo again through the vast, soundless spaces of my desolation.
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