They
watched it with hungry eyes, a piece of illusion framed by the bleached
and bitter reality.
When evening came the great transformation began. With the first
deepening of color the desert's silent heart began to beat in
expectation of its hour of beauty. Its bleak detail was lost in
shrouding veils and fiery reflection. The earth floor became a golden
sea from which the capes reared themselves in shapes of bronze and
copper. The ring of mountains in the east flushed to the pink of the
topaz, then bending westward shaded from rosy lilac to mauve, and where
the sunset backed them, darkened to black. As the hour progressed the
stillness grew more profound, the naked levels swept out in wilder
glory, inundated by pools of light, lines of fire eating a glowing way
through sinks where twilight gathered. With each moment it became a
more tremendous spectacle. The solemnity attendant on the passage of a
miracle held it. From the sun's mouth the voice of God seemed calling
the dead land to life.
Each night the travelers gazed upon it, ragged forms gilded by its
radiance, awed and dumb.
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