It was like the dreary tranquillity of a desert, where there is peace only because there is no life.
And now he had returned.

She had recognised his voice calling aloud in the night for Bulangi.

She had crept out after her master to listen closer to the intoxicating sound.

Dain was there, in a boat, talking to Bulangi.

Taminah, listening with arrested breath, heard another voice.
The maddening joy, that only a second before she thought herself incapable of containing within her fast-beating heart, died out, and left her shivering in the old anguish of physical pain that she had suffered once before at the sight of Dain and Nina.