Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/335

 be inseparable—united for life—for they understood. With them it was as Wilhelm Müller, the poet of the "Schöne Müllerin" cycle, sings in his verses "Quick Friendship", where the two travellers in a moment are brothers in heart.

"Come with me," said Bosco, throwing his arm over the Beduin's neck.

"Yes—come!" exclaimed Kassad.

And so they went along together. In the hotel, Bosco had his own little room. A little one only it was indeed—plain, poor, with only one bed. But they ate something together, and drank something together; and then they put out the light and lay down together, on that hard little bed, each with his arms about the other, with heart next heart. The gas-lamp out in the street cast a narrow, shimmering light on the ceiling.

"Brother," said Bosco, "awhile ago, when thou wast reading the note from the woman who desired thee—from the way thou didst so, also from the tone of that "No!", I knew that it is with thee as with me; that thou too art suffering as am I. That thou too art in pain, because of a real, a true love, which will not away from the heart, let one do what he will!"

"Thou hast thought aright," said Kassad; and he pressed his dark head upon his new brother's breast, and wept there—half for sorrow and half in joy that he could weep with a Brother. And Bosco stroked gently the tossed, black locks, and murmured soothing words; and at last he said—"Now tell me thy story." …

The narrative of the young Bedouin is of his early and only real love with a woman—an affair however wholly psychic.

… "And then Kassad pressed himself ever tighter to his new Brother whom he had thus found this night; and he wept himself out, like a child—he, this strong-muscled, brown-skinned, barefooted athlete of the desert—poor fellow!

And then, in turn, did Bosco relate to Kassad his own heart-history. A sad, a heart-breaking one …

Long talked they thus together; and then they slept there together, no longer without consolation; for each true and feeling heart rested on just such another heart!…

While they were sitting together on the bed, in the early morning, with yet many matters in each others' lives to tell of, Kassad said to his new brother: