As Domini and Androvsky rode into this whirlpool of humanity, above which the sky was red like a great wound, it flowed and eddied round them, making them its centre. The arrival of a stranger-woman was a rare, if not an unparalleled, event in Amara, and Batouch had been very busy in spreading the fame of his mistress.

"Madame should dismount," said Batouch. "Ali will take the horses, and I will escort Madame and Monsieur up the hill to the place of the fountain. Shabah will be there to greet Madame."

"What an uproar!" Domini exclaimed, half laughing, half confused. "Who on earth is Shabah?"

"Shabah is the Caid of Amara," replied Batouch with dignity. "The greatest man of the city. He awaits Madame by the fountain." Domini cast a glance at Androvsky.

"Well?" she said.

He shrugged his shoulders like a man who thinks strife useless and the moment come for giving in to Fate.

"The monster has opened his jaws for us," he said, forcing a laugh. "We had better walk in, I suppose. But—O Domini!—the silence of the wastes!"

"We shall know it again. This is only for the moment. We shall have all its joy again."

"Who knows?" he said, as he had said when they were riding up the sand slope. "Who knows?"

Then they got off their horses and were taken by the crowd.



CHAPTER XXII

The tumult of Amara waked up in Domini the town-sense that had been slumbering. All that seemed to confuse, to daze, to repel Androvsky, even to inspire him with fear, the noise of the teeming crowds, their perpetual movement, their contact, startled her into a vividness of life and apprehension of its various meanings, that sent a thrill through her. And the thrill was musical with happiness. To the sad a great vision of human life brings sadness because they read into the hearts of others their own misery. But to the happy such a vision brings exultation, for everywhere they find dancing reflections of their own joy. Domini had lived much in crowds, but always she had been actively unhappy, or at least coldly dreary in them. Now, for the first time, she was surrounded by masses of fellow-beings in her splendid contentment. And the effect of this return, as it were, to something like the former material conditions of her life, with the mental and affectional conditions of it transformed by joy, was striking even to herself. Suddenly she realised to the full her own humanity, and the living warmth of sympathy that is fanned into flame in a human heart by the presence of human life with its hopes, desires, fears, passions, joys, that leap to the eye. Instead of hating this fierce change from solitude with the man she loved to a crowd with the man she loved she rejoiced in it. Androvsky was the cause of both her joys, joy in the waste and joy in Amara, but while he shared the one he did not share the other.

This did not surprise her because of the conditions in which he had lived. He was country-bred and had always dwelt far from towns. She was returning to an old experience—old, for the London crowd and the crowd of Amara were both crowds of men, however different—with a mind transformed by happiness. To him the experience was new. Something within her told her that it was necessary, that it had been ordained because he needed it. The recalled town-sense, with its sharpness of observation, persisted. As she rode in to Amara she had seemed to herself to be reading Androvsky with an almost merciless penetration which yet she could not check. Now she did not wish to check it, for the penetration that is founded on perfect love can only yield good fruit. It seemed to her that she was allowed to see clearly for Androvsky what he could not see himself, almost as the mother sees for the child. This contact with the crowds of Amara was, she thought, one of the gifts the desert made to him. He did not like it. He wished to reject it. But he was mistaken. For the moment his vision was clouded, as our vision for ourselves so often is. She realised this, and, for the first time since the marriage service at Beni-Mora, perhaps seemed to be selfish. She opposed his wish. Hitherto there had never been any sort of contest between them. Their desires, like their hearts, had been in accord. Now there was not a contest, for Androvsky yielded to Domini's preference, when she expressed it, with a quickness that set his passion before her in a new and beautiful light. But she knew that, for the moment, they were not in accord. He hated and dreaded what she encountered with a vivid sensation of sympathy and joy.

She felt that there was something morbid in his horror of the crowd, and the same strength of her nature said to her, "Uproot it!"

Their camp was pitched on the sand-hills, to the north of the city near the French and Arab cemeteries. They reached it only when darkness was falling, going out of the city on foot by the great wall of dressed stone which enclosed the Kasba of the native soldiers, and ascending and descending various slopes of deep sand, over which the airs of night blew with a peculiar thin freshness that renewed Domini's sense of being at the end of the world. Everything here whispered the same message, said, "We are the denizens of far-away."

In their walk to the camp they were accompanied by a little procession. Shabah, the Caid of Amara, a shortish man whose immense dignity made him almost gigantic, insisted upon attending them to the tents, with his young brother, a pretty, libertine boy of sixteen, the brother's tutor, an Arab black as a negro but without the negro's look of having been freshly oiled, and two attendants. To them joined himself the Caid of the Nomads, a swarthy potentate who not only looked, but actually was, immense, his four servants, and his uncle, a venerable person like a shepherd king. These worthies surrounded Domini and Androvsky, and behind streamed the curious, the envious, the greedy and the desultory Arabs, who follow in the trail of every stranger, hopeful of the crumbs that are said to fall from the rich man's table. Shabah spoke French and led the conversation, which was devoted chiefly to his condition of health. Some years before an attempt had been made upon his life by poison, and since that time, as he himself expressed it, his stomach had been "perturbed as a guard dog in the night when robbers are approaching." All efforts to console or to inspire him with hope of future cure were met with a stern hopelessness, a brusque certainty of perpetual suffering. The idea that his stomach could again know peace evidently shocked and distressed him, and as they all waded together through the sand, pioneered by the glorified Batouch, Domini was obliged to yield to his emphatic despair, and to join with him in his appreciation of the perpetual indigestion which set him apart from the rest of the world like some God within a shrine. The skittish boy, his brother, who wore kid gloves, cast at her sly glances of admiration which asked for a return. The black tutor grinned. And the Caid of the Nomads punctuated their progress with loud grunts of heavy satisfaction, occasionally making use of Batouch as interpreter to express his hopes that they would visit his palace in the town, and devour a cous-cous on his carpet.

When they came to the tents it was necessary to entertain these personages with coffee, and they finally departed promising a speedy return, and full of invitations, which were cordially accepted by Batouch on his employer's behalf before either Domini or Androvsky had time to say a word.

As the cortege disappeared over the sands towards the city Domini burst into a little laugh, and drew Androvsky out to the tent door to see them go.

"Society in the sands!" she exclaimed gaily. "Boris, this is a new experience. Look at our guests making their way to their palaces!"

Slowly the potentates progressed across the white dunes towards the city. Shabah wore a long red cloak. His brother was in pink and gold, with white billowing trousers. The Caid of the Nomads was in green. They all moved with a large and conscious majesty, surrounded by their obsequious attendants. Above them the purple sky showed a bright evening star. Near it was visible the delicate silhouette of the young moon. Scattered over the waste rose many koubbahs, grey in the white, with cupolas of gypse. Hundreds of dogs were barking in the distance. To the left, on the vast, rolling slopes of sand, glared the innumerable fires kindled before the tents of the Ouled Nails. Before the sleeping tent rose the minarets and the gilded cupolas of the city which it dominated from its mountain of sand. Behind it was the blanched immensity of the plain, of the lonely desert from which Domini and Androvsky had come to face this barbaric stir of life. And the city was full of music, of tomtoms throbbing, of bugles blowing in the Kasba, of pipes shrieking from hidden dwellings, and of the faint but multitudinous voices of men, carried to them on their desolate and treeless height by the frail wind of night that seemed a white wind, twin-brother of the sands.

"Let us go a step or two towards the city, Boris," Domini said, as their guests sank magnificently down into a fold of the dunes.

"Towards the city!" he answered. "Why not—?" He glanced behind him to the vacant, noiseless sands.

She set her impulse against his for the first time.

"No, this is our town life, our Sahara season. Let us give ourselves to it. The loneliness will be its antidote some day."

"Very well, Domini," he answered.

They went a little way towards the city, and stood still in the sand at the edge of their height.

"Listen, Boris! Isn't it strange in the night all this barbaric music? It excites me."

"You are glad to be here."

She heard the note of disappointment in his voice, but did not respond to it.

"And look at all those fires, hundreds of them in the sand!"

"Yes," he said, "it is wonderful, but the solitudes are best. This is not the heart of the desert, this is what the Arabs call it, 'The belly of the Desert.' In the heart of the desert there is silence."

She thought of the falling of the wind when the Sahara took them, and knew that her love of the silence was intense. Nevertheless, to-night the other part of her was in the ascendant. She wanted him to share it. He did not. Could she provoke him to share it?

"Yet, as we rode in, I had a feeling that the heart of the desert was here," she said. "You know I said so."

"Do you say so still?"

"The heart, Boris, is the centre of life, isn't it?"

He was silent. She felt his inner feeling fighting hers.

"To-night," she said, putting her arm through his, and looking towards the city. "I feel a tremendous sympathy with human life such as I never felt before. Boris, it comes to me from you. Yes, it does. It is born of my love for you, and seems to link me, and you with me, to all these strangers, to all men and women, to everything that lives. It is as if I was not quite human before, and my love for you had made me completely human, had done something to me that even—even my love for God had not been able to do."

She lowered her voice at the last words. After a moment she added:

"Perhaps in isolation, even with you, I could not come to completeness. Perhaps you could not in isolation even with me. Boris, I think it's good for us to be in the midst of life for a time."

"You wish to remain here, Domini?"

"Yes, for a time."

The fatalistic feeling that had sometimes come upon her in this land entered into her at this moment. She felt, "It is written that we are to remain here."

"Let us remain here, Domini," he said quietly.

The note of disappointment had gone out of his voice, deliberately banished from it by his love for her, but she seemed to hear it, nevertheless, echoing far down in his soul. At that moment she loved him like a woman he had made a lover, but also like a woman he had made a mother by becoming a child.

"Thank you, Boris," she answered very quietly. "You are good to me."

"You are good to me," he said, remembering the last words of Father Roubier. "How can I be anything else?"

Directly he had spoken the words his body trembled violently.

"Boris, what is it?" she exclaimed, startled.

He took his arm away from hers.

"These—these noises of the city in the night coming across the sand-hills are extraordinary. I have become so used to silence that perhaps they get upon my nerves. I shall grow accustomed to them presently."

He turned towards the tents, and she went with him. It seemed to her that he had evaded her question, that he had not wished to answer it, and the sense sharply awakened in her by a return to life near a city made her probe for the reason of this. She did not find it, but in her mental search she found herself presently at Mogar. It seemed to her that the same sort of uneasiness which had beset her husband at Mogar beset him now more fiercely at Amara, that, as he had just said, his nerves were being tortured by something. But it could not be the noises from the city.

After dinner Batouch came to the tent to suggest that they should go down with him into the city. Domini, feeling certain that Androvsky would not wish to go, at once refused, alleging that she was tired. Batouch then asked Androvsky to go with him, and, to Domini's astonishment, he said that if she did not mind his leaving her for a short time he would like a stroll.

"Perhaps," he said to her, as Batouch and he were starting, "perhaps it will make me more completely human; perhaps there is something still to be done that even you, Domini, have not accomplished."

She knew he was alluding to her words before dinner. He stood looking at her with a slight smile that did not suggest happiness, then added:

"That link you spoke of between us and these strangers"—he made a gesture towards the city—"I ought perhaps to feel it more strongly than I do. I—I will try to feel it."

Then he turned away, and went with Batouch across the sand-hills, walking heavily.

As Domini watched him going she felt chilled, because there was something in his manner, in his smile, that seemed for the moment to set them apart from each other, something she did not understand.

Soon Androvsky disappeared in a fold of the sands as he had disappeared in a fold of the sands at Mogar, not long before De Trevignac came. She thought of Mogar once more, steadily, reviewing mentally—with the renewed sharpness of intellect that had returned to her, brought by contact with the city—all that had passed there, as she never reviewed it before.

It had been a strange episode.

She began to walk slowly up and down on the sand before the tent. Ouardi came to walk with her, but she sent him away. Before doing so, however, something moved her to ask him:

"That African liqueur, Ouardi—you remember that you brought to the tent at Mogar—have we any more of it?"

"The monk's liqueur, Madame?"

"What do you mean—monk's liqueur?"

"It was invented by a monk, Madame, and is sold by the monks of El-Largani."

"Oh! Have we any more of it?"

"There is another bottle, Madame, but I should not dare to bring it if——"

He paused.

"If what, Ouardi?"

"If Monsieur were there."

Domini was on the point of asking him why, but she checked herself and told him to leave her. Then she walked up and down once more on the sand. She was thinking now of the broken glass on the ground at Androvsky's feet when she found him alone in the tent after De Trevignac had gone. Ouardi's words made her wonder whether this liqueur, brought to celebrate De Trevignac's presence in the camp, had turned the conversation upon the subject of the religious orders; whether Androvsky had perhaps said something against them which had offended De Trevignac, a staunch Catholic; whether there had been a quarrel between the two men on the subject of religion. It was possible. She remembered De Trevignac's strange, almost mystical, gesture in the dawn, following his look of horror towards the tent where her husband lay sleeping.

To-night her mind—her whole nature—felt terribly alive.

She tried to think no more of Mogar, but her thoughts centred round it, linked it with this great city, whose lights shone in the distance below her, whose music came to her from afar over the silence of the sands.

Mogar and Amara; what had they to do with one another? Leagues of desert divided them. One was a desolation, the other was crowded with men. What linked them together in her mind?

Androvsky's fear of both—that was the link. She kept on thinking of the glance he had cast at the watch-tower, to which Trevignac had been even then approaching, although they knew it not. De Trevignac! She walked faster on the sand, to and fro before the tent. Why had he looked at the tent in which Androvsky slept with horror? Was it because Androvsky had denounced the religion that he reverenced and loved? Could it have been that? But then—did Androvsky actively hate religion? Perhaps he hated it, and concealed his hatred from her because he knew it would cause her pain. Yet she had sometimes felt as if he were seeking, perhaps with fear, perhaps with ignorance, perhaps with uncertainty, but still seeking to draw near to God. That was why she had been able to hope for him, why she had not been more troubled by his loss of the faith in which he had been brought up, and to which she belonged heart and soul. Could she have been wrong in her feeling—deceived? There were men in the world, she knew, who denied the existence of a God, and bitterly ridiculed all faith. She remembered the blasphemies of her father. Had she married a man who, like him, was lost, who, as he had, furiously denied God?

A cold thrill of fear came into her heart. Suddenly she felt as if, perhaps, even in her love, Androvsky had been a stranger to her.

She stood upon the sand. It chanced that she looked towards the camp of the Ouled Nails, whose fires blazed upon the dunes. While she looked she was presently aware of a light that detached itself from the blaze of the fires, and moved from them, coming towards the place where she was standing, slowly. The young moon only gave a faint ray to the night. This light travelled onward through the dimness like an earth-bound star. She watched it with intentness, as people watch any moving thing when their minds are eagerly at work, staring, yet scarcely conscious that they see.

The little light moved steadily on over the sands, now descending the side of a dune, now mounting to a crest, and always coming towards the place where Domini was standing, And presently this determined movement towards her caught hold of her mind, drew it away from other thoughts, fixed it on the light. She became interested in it, intent upon it.

Who was bearing it? No doubt some desert man, some Arab. She imagined him tall, brown, lithe, half-naked, holding the lamp in his muscular fingers, treading on bare feet silently, over the deep sand. Why had he left the camp? What was his purpose?

The light drew near. It was now moving over the flats and seemed, she thought, to travel more quickly. And always it came straight towards where she was standing. A conviction dawned in her that it was travelling with an intention of reaching her, that it was carried by someone who was thinking of her. But how could that be? She thought of the light as a thing with a mind and a purpose, borne by someone who backed up its purpose, helping it to do what it wanted. And it wanted to come to her.

In Mogar! Androvsky had dreaded something in Mogar. De Trevignac had come. He dreaded something in Amara. This light came. For an instant she fancied that the light was a lamp carried by De Trevignac. Then she saw that it gleamed upon a long black robe, the soutane of a priest.

As she and Androvsky rode into Amara she had asked herself whether his second dread would be followed, as his first dread had been, by an unusual incident. When she saw the soutane of a priest, black in the lamplight, moving towards her over the whiteness of the sand, she said to herself that it was to be so followed. This priest stood in the place of De Trevignac.

Why did he come to her?



CHAPTER XXIII

When the priest drew close to the tent Domini saw that it was not he who carried the lantern, but a native soldier, one of the Tirailleurs, formerly called Turcos, who walked beside him. The soldier saluted her, and the priest took off his broad, fluffy black hat.

"Good-evening, Madame," he said, speaking French with the accent of Marseilles. "I am the Aumonier of Amara, and have just heard of your arrival here, and as I was visiting my friends on the sand-hills yonder, I thought I would venture to call and ask whether I could be of any service to you. The hour is informal, I know, but to tell the truth, Madame, after five years in Amara one does not know how to be formal any longer."

His eyes, which had a slightly impudent look, rare in a priest but not unpleasing, twinkled cheerfully in the lamplight as he spoke, and his whole expression betokened a highly social disposition and the most genuine pleasure at meeting with a stranger. While she looked at him, and heard him speak, Domini laughed at herself for the imaginations she had just been cherishing. He had a broad figure, long arms, large feet encased in stout, comfortable boots. His face was burnt brown by the sun and partially concealed by a heavy black beard, whiskers and moustache. His features were blunt and looked boyish, though his age must have been about forty. The nose was snub, and accorded with the expression in his eyes, which were black like his hair and full of twinkling lights. As he smiled genially on Domini he showed two rows of small, square white teeth. His Marseilles accent exactly suited his appearance, which was rough but honest. Domini welcomed him gladly. Indeed, her reception of him was more than cordial, almost eager. For she had been vaguely expecting some tragic figure, some personality suggestive of mystery or sorrow, and she thought of the incidents at Mogar, and associated the moving light with the approach of further strange events. This homely figure of her religion, beaming satisfaction and comfortable anticipation of friendly intercourse, laid to rest fears which only now, when she was conscious of relief, she knew she had been entertaining. She begged the priest to come into the dining-tent, and, taking up the little bell which was on the table, went out into the sand and rang it for Ouardi.

He came at once, like a shadow gliding over the waste.

"Bring us coffee for two, Ouardi, biscuits"—she glanced at her visitor—"bon-bons, yes, the bon-bons in the white box, and the cigars. And take the soldier with you and entertain him well. Give him whatever he likes."

Ouardi went away with the soldier, talking frantically, and Domini returned to the tent, where she found the priest gleaming with joyous anticipation. They sat down in the comfortable basket chairs before the tent door, through which they could see the shining of the city's lights and hear the distant sound of its throbbing and wailing music.

"My husband has gone to see the city," Domini said after she had told the priest her name and been informed that his was Max Beret.

"We only arrived this evening."

"I know, Madame."

He beamed on her, and stroked his thick beard with his broad, sunburnt hand. "Everyone in Amara knows, and everyone in the tents. We know, too, how many tents you have, how many servants, how many camels, horses, dogs."

He broke into a hearty laugh.

"We know what you've just had for dinner!"

Domini laughed too.

"Not really!"

"Well, I heard in the camp that it was soup and stewed mutton. But never mind! You must forgive us. We are barbarians! We are sand-rascals! We are ruffians of the sun!"

His laugh was infectious. He leaned back in his chair and shook with the mirth his own remarks had roused.

"We are ruffians of the sun!" he repeated with gusto. "And we must be forgiven everything."

Although clad in a soutane he looked, at that moment, like a type of the most joyous tolerance, and Domini could not help mentally comparing him with the priest of Beni-Mora. What would Father Roubier think of Father Beret?

"It is easy to forgive in the sun," Domini said.

The priest laid his hands on his knees, setting his feet well apart. She noticed that his hands were not scrupulously clean.

"Madame," he said, "it is impossible to be anything but lenient in the sun. That is my experience. Excuse me but are you a Catholic?"

"Yes."

"So much the better. You must let me show you the chapel. It is in the building with the cupolas. The congregation consists of five on a full Sunday." His laugh broke out again. "I hope the day after to-morrow you and your husband will make it seven. But, as I was saying, the sun teaches one a lesson of charity. When I first came to live in Africa in the midst of the sand-rascals—eh; Madame!—I suppose as a priest I ought to have been shocked by their goings-on. And indeed I tried to be, I conscientiously did my best. But it was no good. I couldn't be shocked. The sunshine drove it all out of me. I could only say, 'It is not for me to question le bon Dieu, and le bon Dieu has created these people and set them here in the sand to behave as they do.' What is my business? I can't convert them. I can't change their morals. I must just be a friend to them, cheer them up in their sorrows, give them a bit if they're starving, doctor them a little. I'm a first-rate hand at making an Arab take a pill or a powder!—when they are ill, and make them at home with the white marabout. That's what the sun has taught me, and every sand-rascal and sand-rascal's child in Amara is a friend of mine."

He stretched out his legs as if he wished to elongate his satisfaction, and stared Domini full in the face with eyes that confidently, naively, asked for her approval of his doctrine of the sun. She could not help liking him, though she felt more as if she were sitting with a jolly, big, and rather rowdy boy than with a priest.

"You are fond of the Arabs then?" she said.

"Of course I am, Madame. I can speak their language, and I'm as much at home in their tents, and more, than I should ever be at the Vatican—with all respect to the Holy Father."

He got up, went out into the sand, expectorated noisily, then returned to the tent, wiping his bearded mouth with a large red cotton pocket-handkerchief.

"Are you staying here long, Madame?"

He sat down again in his chair, making it creak with his substantial weight.

"I don't know. If my husband is happy here. But he prefers the solitudes, I think."

"Does he? And yet he's gone into the city. Plenty of bustle there at night, I can tell you. Well, now, I don't agree with your husband. I know it's been said that solitude is good for the sad, but I think just the contrary. Ah!"

The last sonorously joyous exclamation jumped out of Father Beret at the sight of Ouardi, who at this moment entered with a large tray, covered with a coffee-pot, cups, biscuits, bon-bons, cigars, and a bulging flask of some liqueur flanked by little glasses.

"You fare generously in the desert I see, Madame," he exclaimed. "And so much the better. What's your servant's name?"

Domini told him.

"Ouardi! that means born in the time of the roses." He addressed Ouardi in Arabic and sent him off into the darkness chuckling gaily. "These Arab names all have their meanings—Onlagareb, mother of scorpions, Omteoni, mother of eagles, and so on. So much the better! Comforts are rare here, but you carry them with you. Sugar, if you please."

Domini put two lumps into his cup.

"If you allow me!"

He added two more.

"I never refuse a good cigar. These harmless joys are excellent for man. They help his Christianity. They keep him from bitterness, harsh judgments. But harshness is for northern climes—rainy England, eh? Forgive me, Madame. I speak in joke. You come from England perhaps. It didn't occur to me that—"

They both laughed. His garrulity was irresistible and made Domini feel as if she were sitting with a child. Perhaps he caught her feeling, for he added:

"The desert has made me an enfant terrible, I fear. What have you there?"

His eyes had been attracted by the flask of liqueur, to which Domini was stretching out her hand with the intention of giving him some.

"I don't know."

She leaned forward to read the name on the flask.

"L o u a r i n e," she said.

"Pst!" exclaimed the priest, with a start.

"Will you have some? I don't know whether it's good. I've never tasted it, or seen it before. Will you have some?"

She felt so absolutely certain that he would say "Yes" that she lifted the flask to pour the liqueur into one of the little glasses, but, looking at him, she saw that he hesitated.

"After all—why not?" he ejaculated. "Why not?"

She was holding the flask over the glass. He saw that his remark surprised her.

"Yes, Madame, thanks."

She poured out the liqueur and handed it to him. He set it down by his coffee-cup.

"The fact is, Madame—but you know nothing about this liqueur?"

"No, nothing. What is it?"

Her curiosity was roused by his hesitation, his words, but still more by a certain gravity which had come into his face.

"Well, this liqueur comes from the Trappist monastery of El-Largani."

"The monks' liqueur!" she exclaimed.

And instantly she thought of Mogar.

"You do know then?"

"Ouardi told me we had with us a liqueur made by some monks."

"This is it, and very excellent it is. I have tasted it in Tunis."

"But then why did you hesitate to take it here?"

He lifted his glass up to the lamp. The light shone on its contents, showing that the liquid was pale green.

"Madame," he said, "the Trappists of El-Largani have a fine property. They grow every sort of things, but their vineyards are specially famous, and their wines bring in a splendid revenue. This is their only liqueur, this Louarine. It, too, has brought in a lot of money to the community, but when what they have in stock at the monastery now is exhausted they will never make another franc by Louarine."

"But why not?"

"The secret of its manufacture belonged to one monk only. At his death he was to confide it to another whom he had chosen."

"And he died suddenly without—"

"Madame, he didn't die."

The gravity had returned to the priest's face and deepened there, transforming it. He put the glass down without touching it with his lips.

"Then—I don't understand."

"He disappeared from the monastery."

"Do you mean he left it—a Trappist?"

"Yes."

"After taking the final vows?"

"Oh, he had been a monk at El-Largani for over twenty years."

"How horrible!" Domini said. She looked at the pale-green liquid. "How horrible!" she repeated.

"Yes. The monks would have kept the matter a secret, but a servant of the hotellerie—who had taken no vow of eternal silence—spoke, and—well, I know it here in the 'belly of the desert.'"

"Horrible!"

She said the word again, and as if she felt its meaning more acutely each time she spoke it.

"After twenty years to go!" she added after a moment. "And was there no reason, no—no excuse—no, I don't mean excuse! But had nothing exceptional happened?"

"What exceptional thing can happen in a Trappist monastery?" said the priest. "One day is exactly like another there, and one year exactly like another."

"Was it long ago?"

"No, not very long. Only some months. Oh, perhaps it may be a year by now, but not more. Poor fellow! I suppose he was a man who didn't know himself, Madame, and the devil tempted him."

"But after twenty years!" said Domini.

The thing seemed to her almost incredible.

"That man must be in hell now," she added. "In the hell a man can make for himself by his own act. Oh, here is my husband."

Androvsky stood in the tent door, looking in upon them with startled, scrutinising eyes. He had come over the deep sand without noise. Neither Domini nor the priest had heard a footstep. The priest got up from his chair and bowed genially.

"Good-evening, Monsieur," he said, not waiting for any introduction. "I am the Aumonier of Amara, and——"

He paused in the full flow of his talk. Androvsky's eyes had wandered from his face to the table, upon which stood the coffee, the liqueur, and the other things brought by Ouardi. It was evident even to the self-centred priest that his host was not listening to him. There was a moment's awkward pause. Then Domini said:

"Boris, Monsieur l'Aumonier!"

She did not speak loudly, but with an intention that recalled the mind of her husband. He stepped slowly into the tent and held out his hand in silence to the priest. As he did so the lamplight fell full upon him.

"Boris, are you ill?" Domini exclaimed.

The priest had taken Androvsky's hand, but with a doubtful air. His cheerful and confident manner had died away, and his eyes, fixed upon his host, shone with an astonishment which was mingled with a sort of boyish glumness. It was evident that he felt that his presence was unwelcome.

"I have a headache," Androvsky said. "I—that is why I returned."

He dropped the priest's hand. He was again looking towards the table.

"The sun was unusually fierce to-day," Domini said. "Do you think—"

"Yes, yes," he interrupted. "That's it. I must have had a touch of the sun."

He put his hand to his head.

"Excuse me, Monsieur," he said, speaking to the priest but not looking at him. "I am really feeling unwell. Another day—"

He went out of the tent and disappeared silently into the darkness. Domini and the priest looked after him. Then the priest, with an air of embarrassment, took up his hat from the table. His cigar had gone out, but he pulled at it as if he thought it was still alight, then took it out of his mouth and, glancing with a naive regret at the good things upon the table, his half-finished coffee, the biscuits, the white box of bon-bons—said:

"Madame, I must be off. I've a good way to go, and it's getting late. If you will allow me—"

He went to the tent door and called, in a powerful voice:

"Belgassem! Belgassem!"

He paused, then called again:

"Belgassem!"

A light travelled over the sand from the farther tents of the servants. Then the priest turned round to Domini and shook her by the hand.

"Good-night, Madame."

"I'm very sorry," she said, not trying to detain him. "You must come again. My husband is evidently ill, and—"

"You must go to him. Of course. Of course. This sun is a blessing. Still, it brings fever sometimes, especially to strangers. We sand-rascals—eh, Madame!" he laughed, but the laugh had lost its sonorous ring—"we can stand it. It's our friend. But for travellers sometimes it's a little bit too much. But now, mind, I'm a bit of a doctor, and if to-morrow your husband is no better I might—anyhow"—he looked again longingly at the bon-bons and the cigars—"if you'll allow me I'll call to know how he is."

"Thank you, Monsieur."

"Not at all, Madame, not at all! I can set him right in a minute, if it's anything to do with the sun, in a minute. Ah, here's Belgassem!"

The soldier stood like a statue without, bearing the lantern. The priest hesitated. He was holding the burnt-out cigar in his hand, and now he glanced at it and then at the cigar-box. A plaintive expression overspread his bronzed and bearded face. It became almost piteous. Quickly Domini wait to the table, took two cigars from the box and came back.

"You must have a cigar to smoke on the way."

"Really, Madame, you are too good, but—well, I rarely refuse a fine cigar, and these—upon my word—are—"

He struck a match on his broad-toed boot. His demeanour was becoming cheerful again. Domini gave the other cigar to the soldier.

"Good-night, Madame. A demain then, a demain! I trust your husband may be able to rest. A demain! A demain!"

The light moved away over the dunes and dropped down towards the city. Then Domini hurried across the sand to the sleeping-tent. As she went she was acutely aware of the many distant noises that rose up in the night to the pale crescent of the young moon, the pulsing of the tomtoms in the city, the faint screaming of the pipes that sounded almost like human beings in distress, the passionate barking of the guard dogs tied up to the tents on the sand-slopes where the multitudes of fires gleamed. The sensation of being far away, and close to the heart of the desert, deepened in her, but she felt now that it was a savage heart, that there was something terrible in the remoteness. In the faint moonlight the tent cast black shadows upon the wintry whiteness of the sands, that rose and fell like waves of a smooth but foam-covered sea. And the shadow of the sleeping-tent looked the blackest of them all. For she began to feel as if there was another darkness about it than the darkness that it cast upon the sand. Her husband's face that night as he came in from the dunes had been dark with a shadow cast surely by his soul. And she did not know what it was in his soul that sent forth the shadow.

"Boris!"

She was at the door of the sleeping-tent. He did not answer.

"Boris!"

He came in from the farther tent that he used as a dressing-room, carrying a lit candle in his hand. She went up to him with a movement of swift, ardent sincerity.

"You felt ill in the city? Did Batouch let you come back alone?"

"I preferred to be alone."

He set down the candle on the table, and moved so that the light of it did not fall upon his face. She took his hands in hers gently. There was no response in his hands. They remained in hers, nervelessly. They felt almost like dead things in her hands. But they were not cold, but burning hot.

"You have fever!" she said.

She let one of his hands go and put one of hers to his forehead.

"Your forehead is burning, and your pulses—how they are beating! Like hammers! I must—"

"Don't give me anything, Domini! It would be useless."

She was silent. There was a sound of hopelessness in his voice that frightened her. It was like the voice of a man rejecting remedies because he knew that he was stricken with a mortal disease.

"Why did that priest come here to-night?" he asked.

They were both standing up, but now he sat down in a chair heavily, taking his hand from hers.

"Merely to pay a visit of courtesy."

"At night?"

He spoke suspiciously. Again she thought of Mogar, and of how, on his return from the dunes, he had said to her, "There is a light in the tower." A painful sensation of being surrounded with mystery came upon her. It was hateful to her strong and frank nature. It was like a miasma that suffocated her soul.

"Oh, Boris," she exclaimed bluntly, "why should he not come at night?"

"Is such a thing usual?"

"But he was visiting the tents over there—of the nomads, and he had heard of our arrival. He knew it was informal, but, as he said, in the desert one forgets formalities."

"And—and did he ask for anything?"

"Ask?"

"I saw—on the table-coffee and—and there was liqueur."

"Naturally I offered him something."

"He didn't ask?"

"But, Boris, how could he?"

After a moment of silence he said:

"No, of course not."

He shifted in his chair, crossed one leg over the other, put his hands on the arms of it, and continued:

"What did he talk about?"

"A little about Amara."

"That was all?"

"He hadn't been here long when you came—"

"Oh."

"But he told me one thing that was horrible," she added, obedient to her instinct always to tell the complete truth to him, even about trifles which had nothing to do with their lives or their relation to each other.

"Horrible!" Androvsky said, uncrossing his legs and leaning forward in his chair.

She sat down by him. They both had their backs to the light and were in shadow.

"Yes."

"What was it about—some crime here?"

"Oh, no! It was about that liqueur you saw on the table."

Androvsky was sitting upon a basket chair. As she spoke it creaked under a violent movement that he made.

"How could—what could there be that was horrible connected with that?" he asked, speaking slowly.

"It was made by a monk, a Trappist—"

He got up from his chair and went to the opening of the tent.

"What—" she began, thinking he was perhaps feeling the pain in his head more severely.

"I only want to be in the air. It's rather hot there. Stay where, you are, Domini, and—well, what else?"

He stepped out into the sand, and stood just outside the tent in its shadow.

"It was invented by a Trappist monk of the monastery of El-Largani, who disappeared from the monastery. He had taken the final vows. He had been there for over twenty years."

"He—he disappeared—did the priest say?"

"Yes."

"Where?"

"I don't think—I am sure he doesn't know. But what does it matter? The awful thing is that he should leave the monastery after taking the eternal vows—vows made to God."

After a moment, during which neither of them spoke and Androvsky stood quite still in the sand, she added:

"Poor man!"

Androvsky came a step towards her, then paused.

"Why do you say that, Domini?"

"I was thinking of the agony he must be enduring if he is still alive."

"Agony?"

"Of mind, of heart. You—I know, Boris, you can't feel with me on certain subjects—yet—"

"Yet!" he said.

"Boris"—she got up and came to the tent door, but not out upon the sand—"I dare to hope that some day perhaps——"

She was silent, looking towards him with her brave, steady eyes.

"Agony of heart?" Androvsky said, recurring to her words. "You think—what—you pity that man then?"

"And don't you?"

"I—what has he to do with—us? Why should we—?"

"I know. But one does sometimes pity men one never has seen, never will see, if one hears something frightful about them. Perhaps—don't smile, Boris—perhaps it was seeing that liqueur, which he had actually made in the monastery when he was at peace with God, perhaps it was seeing that, that has made me realise—such trifles stir the imagination, set it working—at any rate—"

She broke off. After a minute, during which he said nothing, she continued:

"I believe the priest felt something of the same sort. He could not drink the liqueur that man had made, although he intended to."

"But—that might have been for a different reason," Androvsky said in a harsh voice; "priests have strange ideas. They often judge things cruelly, very cruelly."

"Perhaps they do. Yes; I can imagine that Father Roubier of Beni-Mora might, though he is a good man and leads a saintly life."

"Those are sometimes the most cruel. They do not understand."

"Perhaps not. It may be so. But this priest—he's not like that."

She thought of his genial, bearded face, his expression when he said, "We are ruffians of the sun," including himself with the desert men, his boisterous laugh.

"His fault might be the other way."

"Which way?"

"Too great a tolerance."

"Can a man be too tolerant towards his fellow-man?" said Androvsky.

There was a strange sound of emotion in his deep voice which moved her. It seemed to her—why, she did not know—to steal out of the depth of something their mutual love had created.

"The greatest of all tolerance is God's," she said. "I'm sure—quite sure—of that."

Androvsky came in out of the shadow of the tent, took her in his arms with passion, laid his lips on hers with passion, hot, burning force and fire, and a hard tenderness that was hard because it was intense.

"God will bless you," he said. "God will bless you. Whatever life brings you at the end you must—you must be blessed by Him."

"But He has blessed me," she whispered, through tears that rushed from her eyes, stirred from their well-springs by his sudden outburst of love for her. "He has blessed me. He has given me you, your love, your truth."

Androvsky released her as abruptly as he had taken her in his arms, turned, and went out into the desert.



CHAPTER XXIV

True to his promise, on the following day the priest called to inquire after Androvsky's health. He happened to come just before dejeuner was ready, and met Androvsky on the sand before the tent door.

"It's not fever then, Monsieur," he said, after they had shaken hands.

"No, no," Androvsky replied. "I am quite well this morning."

The priest looked at him closely with an unembarrassed scrutiny.

"Have you been long in the desert, Monsieur?" he asked.

"Some weeks."

"The heat has tired you. I know the look—"

"I assure you, Monsieur, that I am accustomed to heat. I have lived in North Africa all my life."

"Indeed. And yet by your appearance I should certainly suppose that you needed a change from the desert. The air of the Sahara is magnificent, but there are people—"

"I am not one of them," Androvsky said abruptly. "I have never felt so strong physically as since I have lived in the sand."

The priest still looked at him closely, but said nothing further on the subject of health. Indeed, almost immediately his attention was distracted by the apparition of Ouardi bearing dishes from the cook's tent.

"I am afraid I have called at a very unorthodox time," he remarked, looking at his watch; "but the fact is that here in Amara we—"

"I hope you will stay to dejeuner," Androvsky said.

"It is very good of you. If you are certain that I shall not put you out."

"Please stay."

"I will, then, with pleasure."

He moved his lips expectantly, as if only a sense of politeness prevented him from smacking them. Androvsky went towards the sleeping-tent, where Domini, who had been into the city, was washing her hands.

"The priest has called," he said. "I have asked him to dejeuner."

She looked at him with frank astonishment in her dark eyes.

"You—Boris!"

"Yes, I. Why not?"

"I don't know. But generally you hate people."

"He seems a good sort of man."

She still looked at him with some surprise, even with curiosity.

"Have you taken a fancy to a priest?" she asked, smiling.

"Why not? This man is very different from Father Roubier, more human."

"Father Beret is very human, I think," she answered.

She was still smiling. It had just occurred to her that the priest had timed his visit with some forethought.

"I am coming," she added.

A sudden cheerfulness had taken possession of her. All the morning she had been feeling grave, even almost apprehensive, after a bad night. When her husband had abruptly left her and gone away into the darkness she had been overtaken by a sudden wave of acute depression. She had felt, more painfully than ever before, the mental separation which existed between them despite their deep love, and a passionate but almost hopeless longing had filled her heart that in all things they might be one, not only in love of each other, but in love of God. When Androvsky had taken his arms from her she had seemed to feel herself released by a great despair, and this certainty—for as he vanished into the darkness she was no more in doubt that his love for her left room within his heart for such an agony—had for a moment brought her soul to the dust. She had been overwhelmed by a sensation that instead of being close together they were far apart, almost strangers, and a great bitterness had entered into her. It was accompanied by a desire for action. She longed to follow Androvsky, to lay her hand on his arm, to stop him in the sand and force him to confide in her. For the first time the idea that he was keeping something from her, a sorrow, almost maddened her, even made her feel jealous. The fact that she divined what that sorrow was, or believed she divined it, did not help her just then. She waited a long while, but Androvsky did not return, and at last she prayed and went to bed. But her prayers were feeble, disjointed, and sleep did not come to her, for her mind was travelling with this man who loved her and who yet was out there alone in the night, who was deliberately separating himself from her. Towards dawn, when he stole into the tent, she was still awake, but she did not speak or give any sign of consciousness, although she was hot with the fierce desire to spring up, to throw her arms round him, to draw his head down upon her heart, and say, "I have given myself, body, heart and soul, to you. Give yourself to me; give me the thing you are keeping back—your sorrow. Till I have that I have not all of you. And till I have all of you I am in hell."

It was a mad impulse. She resisted it and lay quite still. And when he lay down and was quiet she slept at length.

Now, as she heard him speak in the sunshine and knew that he had offered hospitality to the comfortable priest her heart suddenly felt lighter, she scarcely knew why. It seemed to her that she had been a little morbid, and that the cloud which had settled about her was lifted, revealing the blue.

At dejeuner she was even more reassured. Her husband seemed to get on with the priest better than she had ever seen him get on with anybody. He began by making an effort to be agreeable that was obvious to her; but presently he was agreeable without effort. The simple geniality and lack of self-consciousness in Father Beret evidently set him at his ease. Once or twice she saw him look at his guest with an earnest scrutiny that puzzled her, but he talked far more than usual and with greater animation, discussing the Arabs and listening to the priest's account of the curiosities of life in Amara. When at length Father Beret rose to go Androvsky said he would accompany him a little way, and they went off together, evidently on the best of terms.

She was delighted and surprised. She had been right, then. It was time that Androvsky was subjected to another influence than that of the unpeopled wastes. It was time that he came into contact with men whose minds were more akin to his than the minds of the Arabs who had been their only companions. She began to imagine him with her in civilised places, to be able to imagine him. And she was glad they had come to Amara and confirmed in her resolve to stay on there. She even began to wish that the French officers quartered there—few in number, some five or six—would find them in the sand, and that Androvsky would offer them hospitality. It occurred to her that it was not quite wholesome for a man to live in isolation from his fellow-men, even with the woman he loved, and she determined that she would not be selfish in her love, that she would think for Androvsky, act for him, even against her own inclination. Perhaps his idea of life in an oasis apart from Europeans was one she ought to combat, though it fascinated her. Perhaps it would be stronger, more sane, to face a more ordinary, less dreamy, life, in which they would meet with people, in which they would inevitably find themselves confronted with duties. She felt powerful enough in that moment to do anything that would make for Androvsky's welfare of soul. His body was strong and at ease. She thought of him going away with the priest in friendly conversation. How splendid it would be if she could feel some day that the health of his soul accorded completely with that of his body!

"Batouch!" she called almost gaily.

Batouch appeared, languidly smoking a cigarette, and with a large flower tied to a twig protending from behind his ear.

"Saddle the horses. Monsieur has gone with the Pere Beret. I shall take a ride, just a short ride round the camp over there—in at the city gate, through the market-place, and home. You will come with me."

Batouch threw away his cigarette with energy. Poet though he was, all the Arab blood in him responded to the thought of a gallop over the sands. Within a few minutes they were off. When she was in the saddle it was at all times difficult for Domini to be sad or even pensive. She had a native passion for a good horse, and riding was one of the joys, and almost the keenest, of her life. She felt powerful when she had a spirited, fiery animal under her, and the wide spaces of the desert summoned speed as they summoned dreams. She and Batouch went away at a rapid pace, circled round the Arab cemetery, made a detour towards the south, and then cantered into the midst of the camps of the Ouled Nails. It was the hour of the siesta. Only a few people were stirring, coming and going over the dunes to and from the city on languid errands for the women of the tents, who reclined in the shade of their brushwood arbours upon filthy cushions and heaps of multi-coloured rags, smoking cigarettes, playing cards with Arab and negro admirers, or staring into vacancy beneath their heavy eyebrows as they listened to the sound of music played upon long pipes of reed. No dogs barked in their camp. The only guardians were old women, whose sandy faces were scored with innumerable wrinkles, and whose withered hands drooped under their loads of barbaric rings and bracelets. Batouch would evidently have liked to dismount here. Like all Arabs he was fascinated by the sight of these idols of the waste, whose painted faces called to the surface the fluid poetry within him, but Domini rode on, descending towards the city gate by which she had first entered Amara. The priest's house was there and Androvsky was with the priest. She hoped he had perhaps gone in to return the visit paid to them. As she rode into the city she glanced at the house. The door was open and she saw the gay rugs in the little hall. She had a strong inclination to stop and ask if her husband were there. He might mount Batouch's horse and accompany her home.

"Batouch," she said, "will you ask if Monsieur Androvsky is with Pere Beret. I think—"

She stopped speaking. She had just seen her husband's face pass across the window-space of the room on the right-hand side of the hall door. She could not see it very well. The arcade built out beyond the house cast a deep shade within, and in this shade the face had flitted like a shadow. Batouch had sprung from his horse. But the sight of the shadowy face had changed her mind. She resolved not to interrupt the two men. Long ago at Beni-Mora she had asked Androvsky to call upon a priest. She remembered the sequel to that visit. This time Androvsky had gone of his own will. If he liked this priest, if they became friends, perhaps—she remembered her vision in the dancing-house, her feeling that when she drew near Amara she was drawing near to the heart of the desert. If she should see Androvsky praying here! Yet Father Beret hardly seemed a man likely to influence her husband, or anyone with a strong and serious personality. He was surely too fond of the things of this world, too obviously a lover and cherisher of the body. Nevertheless, there was something attractive in him, a kindness, a geniality. In trouble he would be sympathetic. Certainly her husband must have taken a liking to him, and the chances of life and the influences of destiny were strange and not to be foreseen.

"No, Batouch," she said. "We won't stop."

"But, Madame," he cried, "Monsieur is in there. I saw his face at the window."

"Never mind. We won't disturb them. I daresay they have something to talk about."

They cantered on towards the market-place. It was not market-day, and the town, like the camp of the Ouled Nails, was almost deserted. As she rode up the hill towards the place of the fountain, however, she saw two handsomely-dressed Arabs, followed by a servant, slowly strolling towards her from the doorway of the Bureau Arabe. One, who was very tall, was dressed in green, and carried a long staff, from which hung green ribbons. The other wore a more ordinary costume of white, with a white burnous and a turban spangled with gold.

"Madame!" said Batouch.

"Yes."

"Do you see the Arab dressed in green?"

He spoke in an almost awestruck voice.

"Yes. Who is he?"

"The great marabout who lives at Beni-Hassan."

The name struck upon Domini's ear with a strange familiarity.

"But that's where Count Anteoni went when he rode away from Beni-Mora that morning."

"Yes, Madame."

"Is it far from Amara?"

"Two hours' ride across the desert."

"But then Count Anteoni may be near us. After he left he wrote to me and gave me his address at the marabout's house."

"If he is still with the marabout, Madame."

They were close to the fountain now, and the marabout and his companion were coming straight towards them.

"If Madame will allow me I will salute the marabout," said Batouch.

"Certainly."

He sprang off his horse immediately, tied it up to the railing of the fountain, and went respectfully towards the approaching potentate to kiss his hand. Domini saw the marabout stop and Batouch bend down, then lift himself up and suddenly move back as if in surprise. The Arab who was with the marabout seemed also surprised. He held out his hand to Batouch, who took it, kissed it, then kissed his own hand, and turning, pointed towards Domini. The Arab spoke a word to the marabout, then left him, and came rapidly forward to the fountain. As he drew close to her she saw a face browned by the sun, a very small, pointed beard, a pair of intensely bright eyes surrounded by wrinkles. These eyes held her. It seemed to her that she knew them, that she had often looked into them and seen their changing expressions. Suddenly she exclaimed:

"Count Anteoni!"

"Yes, it is I!"

He held out his hand and clasped hers.

"So you have started upon your desert journey," he added, looking closely at her, as he had often looked in the garden.

"Yes."

"And as I ventured to advise—that last time, do you remember?"

She recollected his words.

"No," she replied, and there was a warmth of joy, almost of pride, in her voice. "I am not alone."

Count Anteoni was standing with one hand on her horse's neck. As she spoke, his hand dropped down.

"I have been away from Beni-Hassan," he said slowly. "The marabout and I have been travelling in the south and only returned yesterday. I have heard no news for a long time from Beni-Mora, but I know. You are Madame Androvsky."

"Yes," she answered; "I am Madame Androvsky."

There was a silence between them. In it she heard the dripping water in the fountain. At last Count Anteoni spoke again.

"It was written," he said quietly. "It was written in the sand."

She thought of the sand-diviner and was silent. An oppression of spirit had suddenly come upon her. It seemed to her connected with something physical, something obscure, unusual, such as she had never felt before. It was, she thought, as if her body at that moment became more alive than it had ever been, and as if that increase of life within her gave to her a peculiar uneasiness. She was startled. She even felt alarmed, as at the faint approach of something strange, of something that was going to alter her life. She did not know at all what it was. For the moment a sense of confusion and of pain beset her, and she was scarcely aware with whom she was, or where. The sensation passed and she recovered herself and met Count Anteoni's eyes quietly.

"Yes," she answered; "all that has happened to me here in Africa was written in the sand and in fire."

"You are thinking of the sun."

"Yes."

"I—where are you living?"

"Close by on the sand-hill beyond the city wall."

"Where you can see the fires lit at night and hear the sound of the music of Africa?"

"Yes."

"As he said."

"Yes, as he said."

Again the overwhelming sense of some strange and formidable approach came over her, but this time she fought it resolutely.

"Will you come and see me?" she said.

She had meant to say "us," but did not say it.

"If you will allow me."

"When?"

"I—" she heard the odd, upward grating in his voice which she remembered so well. "May I come now if you are riding to the tents?"

"Please do."

"I will explain to the marabout and follow you."

"But the way? Shall Batouch—?"

"No, it is not necessary."

She rode away. When she reached the camp she found that Androvsky had not yet returned, and she was glad. She wanted to talk to Count Anteoni alone. Within a few minutes she saw him coming towards the tent. His beard and his Arab dress so altered him that at a short distance she could not recognise him, could only guess that it was he. But directly he was near, and she saw his eyes, she forgot that he was altered, and felt that she was with her kind and whimsical host of the garden.

"My husband is in the city," she said.

"Yes."

"With the priest."

She saw an expression of surprise flit over Count Anteoni's face. It went away instantly.

"Pere Beret," he said. "He is a cheerful creature and very good to the Arabs."

They sat down just inside the shadow of the tent before the door, and he looked out quietly towards the city.

"Yes, this is the place," he said.

She knew that he was alluding to the vision of the sand-diviner, and said so.

"Did you believe at the time that what he said would come true?" she asked.

"How could I? Am I a child?"

He spoke with gentle irony, but she felt he was playing with her.

"Cannot a man believe such things?"

He did not answer her, but said:

"My fate has come to pass. Do you not care to know what it is?"

"Yes, do tell me."

She spoke earnestly. She felt a change in him, a great change which as yet she did not understand fully. It was as if he had been a man in doubt and was now a man no longer in doubt, as if he had arrived at some goal and was more at peace with himself than he had been.

"I have become a Mohammedan," he said simply.

"A Mohammedan!"

She repeated the words as a person repeats words in surprise, but her voice did not sound surprised.

"You wonder?" he asked.

After a moment she answered:

"No. I never thought of such a thing, but I am not surprised. Now you have told me it seems to explain you, much that I noticed in you, wondered about in you."

She looked at him steadily, but without curiosity.

"I feel that you are happy now."

"Yes, I am happy. The world I used to know, my world and yours, would laugh at me, would say that I was crazy, that it was a whim, that I wished for a new sensation. Simply it had to be. For years I have been tending towards it—who knows why? Who knows what obscure influences have been at work in me, whether there is not perhaps far back, some faint strain of Arab blood mingled with the Sicilian blood in my veins? I cannot understand why. What I can understand is that at last I have fulfilled my destiny! After years of unrest I am suddenly and completely at peace. It is a magical sensation. I have been wandering all my life and have come upon the open door of my home."

He spoke very quietly, but she heard the joy in his voice.

"I remember you saying, 'I like to see men praying in the desert.'"

"Yes. When I looked at them I was longing to be one of them. For years from my garden wall I watched them with a passion of envy, with bitterness, almost with hatred sometimes. They had something I had not, something that set them above me, something that made their lives plain through any complication, and that gave to death a meaning like the meaning at the close of a great story that is going to have a sequel. They had faith. And it was difficult not to hate them. But now I am one of them. I can pray in the desert."

"That was why you left Beni-Mora."

"Yes. I had long been wishing to become a Mohammedan. I came here to be with the marabout, to enter more fully into certain questions, to see if I had any lingering doubts."

"And you have none?"

"None."

She looked at his bright eyes and sighed, thinking of her husband.

"You will go back to Beni-Mora?" she asked.

"I don't think so. I am inclined to go farther into the desert, farther among the people of my own faith. I don't want to be surrounded by French. Some day perhaps I may return. But at present everything draws me onward. Tell me"—he dropped the earnest tone in which he had been speaking, and she heard once more the easy, half-ironical man of the world—"do you think me a half-crazy eccentric?"

"No!"

"You look at me very gravely, even sadly."

"I was thinking of the men who cannot pray," she said, "even in the desert."

"They should not come into the Garden of Allah. Don't you remember that day by the garden wall, when—"

He suddenly checked himself.

"Forgive me," he said simply. "And now tell me about yourself. You never wrote that you were going to be married."

"I knew you would know it in time—when we met again."

"And you knew we should meet again?"

"Did not you?"

He nodded.

"In the heart of the desert. And you—where are you going? You are not returning to civilisation?"

"I don't know. I have no plans. I want to do what my husband wishes."

"And he?"

"He loves the desert. He has suggested our buying an oasis and setting up as date merchants. What do you think of the idea?"

She spoke with a smile, but her eyes were serious, even sad.

"I cannot judge for others," he answered.

When he got up to go he held her hand fast for a moment.

"May I speak what is in my heart?" he asked.

"Yes—do."

"I feel as if what I have told you to-day about myself, about my having come to the open door of a home I had long been wearily seeking, had made you sad. Is it so?"

"Yes," she answered frankly.

"Can you tell me why?"

"It has made me realise more sharply than perhaps I did before what must be the misery of those who are still homeless."

There was in her voice a sound as if she suppressed a sob.

"Hope for them, remembering my many years of wandering."

"Yes, yes."

"Good-bye."

"Will you come again?"

"You are here for long?"

"Some days, I think."

"Whenever you ask me I will come."

"I want you and my husband to meet again. I want that very much." She spoke with a pressure of eagerness.

"Send for me and I will come at any hour."

"I will send—soon."

When he was gone, Domini sat in the shadow of the tent. From where she was she could see the Arab cemetery at a little distance, a quantity of stones half drowned in the sand. An old Arab was wandering there alone, praying for the dead in a loud, persistent voice. Sometimes he paused by a grave, bowed himself in prayer, then rose and walked on again. His voice was never silent. The sound of it was plaintive and monotonous. Domini listened to it, and thought of homeless men, of those who had lived and died without ever coming to that open door through which Count Anteoni had entered. His words and the changed look in his face had made a deep impression upon her. She realised that in the garden, when they were together, his eyes, even when they twinkled with the slightly ironical humour peculiar to him, had always held a shadow. Now that shadow was lifted out of them. How deep was the shadow in her husband's eyes. How deep had it been in the eyes of her father. He had died with that terrible darkness in his eyes and in his soul. If her husband were to die thus! A terror came upon her. She looked out at the stones in the sand and imagined herself there—as the old Arab was—praying for Androvsky buried there, hidden from her on earth for ever. And suddenly she felt, "I cannot wait, I must act."

Her faith was deep and strong. Nothing could shake it. But might it not shake the doubt from another's soul, as a great, pure wind shakes leaves that are dead from a tree that will blossom with the spring? Hitherto a sense of intense delicacy had prevented her from ever trying to draw near definitely to her husband's sadness. But her interview with Count Anteoni, and the sound of this voice praying, praying for the dead men in the sand, stirred her to an almost fierce resolution. She had given herself to Androvsky. He had given himself to her. They were one. She had a right to draw near to his pain, if by so doing there was a chance that she might bring balm to it. She had a right to look closer into his eyes if hers, full of faith, could lift the shadow from them.

She leaned back in the darkness of the tent. The old Arab had wandered further on among the graves. His voice was faint in the sand, faint and surely piteous, as if, even while he prayed, he felt that his prayers were useless, that the fate of the dead was pronounced beyond recall. Domini listened to him no more. She was praying for the living as she had never prayed before, and her prayer was the prelude not to patience but to action. It was as if her conversation with Count Anteoni had set a torch to something in her soul, something that gave out a great flame, a flame that could surely burn up the sorrow, the fear, the secret torture in her husband's soul. All the strength of her character had been roused by the sight of the peace she desired for the man she loved; enthroned in the heart of this other man who was only her friend.

The voice of the old Arab died away in the distance, but before it died away Domini had ceased from hearing it.

She heard only a voice within her, which said to her, "If you really love be fearless. Attack this sorrow which stands like a figure of death between you and your husband. Drive it away. You have a weapon—faith. Use it."

It seemed to her then that through all their intercourse she had been a coward in her love, and she resolved that she would be a coward no longer.



CHAPTER XXV

Domini had said to herself that she would speak to her husband that night. She was resolved not to hesitate, not to be influenced from her purpose by anything. Yet she knew that a great difficulty would stand in her way—the difficulty of Androvsky's intense, almost passionate, reserve. This reserve was the dominant characteristic in his nature. She thought of it sometimes as a wall of fire that he had set round about the secret places of his soul to protect them even from her eyes. Perhaps it was strange that she, a woman of a singularly frank temperament, should be attracted by reserve in another, yet she knew that she was so attracted by the reserve of her husband. Its existence hinted to her depths in him which, perhaps, some day she might sound, she alone, strength which was hidden for her some day to prove.

Now, alone with her purpose, she thought of this reserve. Would she be able to break it down with her love? For an instant she felt as if she were about to enter upon a contest with her husband, but she did not coldly tell over her armoury and select weapons. There was a heat of purpose within her that beckoned her to the unthinking, to the reckless way, that told her to be self-reliant and to trust to the moment for the method.

When Androvsky returned to the camp it was towards evening. A lemon light was falling over the great white spaces of the sand. Upon their little round hills the Arab villages glowed mysteriously. Many horsemen were riding forth from the city to take the cool of the approaching night. From the desert the caravans were coming in. The nomad children played, half-naked, at Cora before the tents, calling shrilly to each other through the light silence that floated airily away into the vast distances that breathed out the spirit of a pale eternity. Despite the heat there was an almost wintry romance in this strange land of white sands and yellow radiance, an ethereal melancholy that stole with the twilight noiselessly towards the tents.

As Androvsky approached Domini saw that he had lost the energy which had delighted her at dejeuner. He walked towards her slowly with his head bent down. His face was grave, even sad, though when he saw her waiting for him he smiled.

"You have been all this time with the priest?" she said.

"Nearly all. I walked for a little while in the city. And you?"

"I rode out and met a friend."

"A friend?" he said, as if startled.

"Yes, from Beni-Mora—Count Anteoni. He has been here to pay me a visit."

She pulled forward a basket-chair for him. He sank into it heavily.

"Count Anteoni here!" he said slowly. "What is he doing here?"

"He is with the marabout at Beni-Hassan. And, Boris, he has become a Mohammedan."

He lifted his head with a jerk and stared at her in silence.

"You are surprised?"

"A Mohammedan—Count Anteoni?"

"Yes. Do you know, when he told me I felt almost as if I had been expecting it."

"But—is he changed then? Is he—"

He stopped. His voice had sounded to her bitter, almost fierce.

"Yes, Boris, he is changed. Have you ever seen anyone who was lost, and the same person walking along the road home? Well, that is Count Anteoni."

They said no more for some minutes. Androvsky was the first to speak again.

"You told him?" he asked.

"About ourselves?"

"Yes."

"I told him."

"What did he say?"

"He had expected it. When we ask him he is coming here again to see us both together."

Androvsky got up from his chair. His face was troubled. Standing before Domini, he said:

"Count Anteoni is happy then, now that he—now that he has joined this religion?"

"Very happy."

"And you—a Catholic—what do you think?"

"I think that, since that is his honest belief, it is a blessed thing for him."

He said no more, but went towards the sleeping-tent.

In the evening, when they were dining, he said to her:

"Domini, to-night I am going to leave you again for a short time."

He saw a look of keen regret come into her face, and added quickly:

"At nine I have promised to go to see the priest. He—he is rather lonely here. He wants me to come. Do you mind?"

"No, no. I am glad—very glad. Have you finished?"

"Quite."

"Let us take a rug and go out a little way in the sand—that way towards the cemetery. It is quiet there at night."

"Yes. I will get a rug." He went to fetch it, threw it over his arm, and they set out together. She had meant the Arab cemetery, but when they reached it they found two or three nomads wandering there.

"Let us go on," she said.

They went on, and came to the French cemetery, which was surrounded by a rough hedge of brushwood, in which there were gaps here and there. Through one of these gaps they entered it, spread out the rug, and lay down on the sand. The night was still and silence brooded here. Faintly they saw the graves of the exiles who had died here and been given to the sand, where in summer vipers glided to and fro, and the pariah dogs wandered stealthily, seeking food to still the desires in their starving bodies. They were mostly very simple, but close to Domini and Androvsky was one of white marble, in the form of a broken column, hung with wreaths of everlasting flowers, and engraved with these words:

ICI REPOSE

JEAN BAPTISTE FABRIANI

Priez pour lui.

When they lay down they both looked at this grave, as if moved by a simultaneous impulse, and read the words.

"Priez pour lui!" Domini said in a low voice.

She put out her hand and took hold of her husband's, and pressed it down on the sand.

"Do you remember that first night, Boris," she said, "at Arba, when you took my hand in yours and laid it against the desert as against a heart?"

"Yes, Domini, I remember."

"That night we were one, weren't we?"

"Yes, Domini."

"Were we"—she was almost whispering in the night—"were we truly one?"

"Why do you—truly one, you say?"

"Yes—one in soul? That is the great union, greater than the union of our bodies. Were we one in soul? Are we now?"

"Domini, why do you ask me such questions? Do you doubt my love?"

"No. But I do ask you. Won't you answer me?"

He was silent. His hand lay in hers, but did not press it.

"Boris"—she spoke the cruel words very quietly,—"we are not truly one in soul. We have never been. I know that."

He said nothing.

"Shall we ever be? Think—if one of us were to die, and the other—the one who was left—were left with the knowledge that in our love, even ours, there had always been separation—could you bear that? Could I bear it?"

"Domini—"

"Yes."

"Why do you speak like this? We are one. You have all my love. You are everything to me."

"And yet you are sad, and you try to hide your sadness, your misery, from me. Can you not give it me? I want it—more than I want anything on earth. I want it, I must have it, and I dare to ask for it because I know how deeply you love me and that you could never love another."

"I never have loved another," he said.

"I was the very first."

"The very first. When we married, although I was a man I was as you were."

She bent down her head and laid her lips on his hand that was in hers.

"Then make our union perfect, as no other union on earth has ever been. Give me your sorrow, Boris. I know what it is."

"How can—you cannot know," he said in a broken voice.

"Yes. Love is a diviner, the only true diviner. I told you once what it was, but I want you to tell me. Nothing that we take is beautiful to us, only what we are given."

"I cannot," he said.

He tried to take his hand from hers, but she held it fast. And she felt as if she were holding the wall of fire with which he surrounded the secret places of his soul.

"To-day, Boris, when I talked to Count Anteoni, I felt that I had been a coward with you. I had seen you suffer and I had not dared to draw near to your suffering. I have been afraid of you. Think of that."

"No."

"Yes, I have been afraid of you, of your reserve. When you withdrew from me I never followed you. If I had, perhaps I could have done something for you."

"Domini, do not speak like this. Our love is happy. Leave it as it is."

"I can't. I will not. Boris, Count Anteoni has found a home. But you are wandering. I can't bear that, I can't bear it. It is as if I were sitting in the house, warm, safe, and you were out in the storm. It tortures me. It almost makes me hate my own safety."

Androvsky shivered. He took his hand forcibly from Domini's.

"I have almost hated it, too," he said passionately. "I have hated it. I'm a—I'm—"

His voice failed. He bent forward and took Domini's face between his hands.

"And yet there are times when I can bless what I have hated. I do bless it now. I—I love your safety. You—at least you are safe."

"You must share it. I will make you share it."

"You cannot."

"I can. I shall. I feel that we shall be together in soul, and perhaps to-night, perhaps even to-night."

Androvsky looked profoundly agitated. His hands dropped down.

"I must go," he said. "I must go to the priest."

He got up from the sand.

"Come to the tent, Domini."

She rose to her feet.

"When you come back," she said, "I shall be waiting for you, Boris."

He looked at her. There was in his eyes a piercing wistfulness. He opened his lips. At that moment Domini felt that he was on the point of telling her all that she longed to know. But the look faded. The lips closed. He took her in his arms and kissed her almost desperately.

"No, no," he said. "I'll keep your love—I'll keep it."

"You could never lose it."

"I might."

"Never."

"If I believed that."

"Boris!"

Suddenly burning tears rushed from her eyes.

"Don't ever say a thing like that to me again!" she said with passion.

She pointed to the grave close to them.

"If you were there," she said, "and I was living, and you had died before—before you had told me—I believe—God forgive me, but I do believe that if, when you died, I were taken to heaven I should find my hell there."

She looked through her tears at the words: "Priez pour lui."

"To pray for the dead," she whispered, as if to herself. "To pray for my dead—I could not do it—I could not. Boris, if you love me you must trust me, you must give me your sorrow."

The night drew on. Androvsky had gone to the priest. Domini was alone, sitting before the tent waiting for his return. She had told Batouch and Ouardi that she wanted nothing more, that no one was to come to the tent again that night. The young moon was rising over the city, but its light as yet was faint. It fell upon the cupolas of the Bureau Arabe, the towers of the mosque and the white sands, whose whiteness it seemed to emphasise, making them pale as the face of one terror-stricken. The city wall cast a deep shadow over the moat of sand in which, wrapped in filthy rags, lay nomads sleeping. Upon the sand-hills the camps were alive with movement. Fires blazed and smoke ascended before the tents that made patches of blackness upon the waste. Round the fires were seated groups of men devouring cous-cous and the red soup beloved of the nomad. Behind them circled the dogs with quivering nostrils. Squadrons of camels lay crouched in the sand, resting after their journeys. And everywhere, from the city and from the waste, rose distant sounds of music, thin, aerial flutings like voices of the night winds, acrid cries from the pipes, and the far-off rolling of the African drums that are the foundation of every desert symphony.

Although she was now accustomed to the music of Africa, Domini could never hear it without feeling the barbarity of the land from which it rose, the wildness of the people who made and who loved it. Always it suggested to her an infinite remoteness, as if it were music sounding at the end of the world, full of half-defined meanings, melancholy yet fierce passion, longings that, momentarily satisfied, continually renewed themselves, griefs that were hidden behind thin veils like the women of the East, but that peered out with expressive eyes, hinting their story and desiring assuagement. And tonight the meaning of the music seemed deeper than it had been before. She thought of it as an outside echo of the voices murmuring in her mind and heart, and the voices murmuring in the mind and heart of Androvsky, broken voices some of them, but some strong, fierce, tense and alive with meaning. And as she sat there alone she thought this unity of music drew her closer to the desert than she had ever been before, and drew Androvsky with her, despite his great reserve. In the heart of the desert he would surely let her see at last fully into his heart. When he came back in the night from the priest he would speak. She was waiting for that.

The moon was mounting. Its light grew stronger. She looked across the sands and saw fires in the city, and suddenly she said to herself, "This is the vision of the sand-diviner realised in my life. He saw me as I am now, in this place." And she remembered the scene in the garden, the crouching figure, the extended arms, the thin fingers tracing swift patterns in the sand, the murmuring voice.

To-night she felt deeply expectant, but almost sad, encompassed by the mystery that hangs in clouds about human life and human relations. What could be that great joy of which the Diviner had spoken? A woman's great joy that starred the desert with flowers and made the dry places run with sweet waters. What could it be?

Suddenly she felt again the oppression of spirit she had been momentarily conscious of in the afternoon. It was like a load descending upon her, and, almost instantly, communicated itself to her body. She was conscious of a sensation of unusual weariness, uneasiness, even dread, then again of an intensity of life that startled her. This intensity remained, grew in her. It was as if the principle of life, like a fluid, were being poured into her out of the vials of God, as if the little cup that was all she had were too small to contain the precious liquid. That seemed to her to be the cause of the pain of which she was conscious. She was being given more than she felt herself capable of possessing. She got up from her chair, unable to remain still. The movement, slight though it was, seemed to remove a veil of darkness that had hung over her and to let in upon her a flood of light. She caught hold of the canvas of the tent. For a moment she felt weak as a child, then strong as an Amazon. And the sense of strength remained, grew. She walked out upon the sand in the direction by which Androvsky would return. The fires in the city and the camps were to her as illuminations for a festival. The music was the music of a great rejoicing. The vast expanse of the desert, wintry white under the moon, dotted with the fires of the nomads, blossomed as the rose. After a few moments she stopped. She was on the crest of a sand-bank, and could see below her the faint track in the sand which wound to the city gate. By this track Androvsky would surely return. From a long distance she would be able to see him, a moving darkness upon the white. She was near to the city now, and could hear voices coming to her from behind its rugged walls, voices of men singing, and calling one to another, the twang of plucked instruments, the click of negroes' castanets. The city was full of joy as the desert was full of joy. The glory of life rushed upon her like a flood of gold, that gold of the sun in which thousands of tiny things are dancing. And she was given the power of giving life, of adding to the sum of glory. She looked out over the sands and saw a moving blot upon them coming slowly towards her, very slowly. It was impossible at this distance to see who it was, but she felt that it was her husband. For a moment she thought of going down to meet him, but she did not move. The new knowledge that had come to her made her, just then, feel shy even of him, as if he must come to her, as if she could make no advance towards him.

As the blackness upon the sand drew nearer she saw that it was a man walking heavily. The man had her husband's gait. When she saw that she turned. She had resolved to meet him at the tent door, to tell him what she had to tell him at the threshold of their wandering home. Her sense of shyness died when she was at the tent door. She only felt now her oneness with her husband, and that to-night their unity was to be made more perfect. If it could be made quite perfect! If he would speak too! Then nothing more would be wanting. At last every veil would have dropped from between them, and as they had long been one flesh they would be one in spirit.

She waited in the tent door.

After what seemed a long time she saw Androvsky coming across the moonlit sand. He was walking very slowly, as if wearied out, with his head drooping. He did not appear to see her till he was quite close to the tent. Then he stopped and gazed at her. The moon—she thought it must be the moon—made his face look strange, like a dying man's face. In this white face the eyes glittered feverishly.

"Boris!" she said.

"Domini!"

"Come here, close to me. I have something to tell you—something wonderful."

He came quite up to her.

"Domini," he said, as if he had not heard her. "Domini, I—I've been to the priest to-night. I meant to confess to him."

"To confess!" she said.

"This afternoon I asked him to hear my confession, but tonight I could not make it. I can only make it to you, Domini—only to you. Do you hear, Domini? Do you hear?"

Something in his face and in his voice terrified her heart. Now she felt as if she would stop him from speaking if she dared, but that she did not dare. His spirit was beyond domination. He would do what he meant to do regardless of her—of anyone.

"What is it, Boris?" she whispered. "Tell me. Perhaps I can understand best because I love best."

He put his arms round her and kissed her, as a man kisses the woman he loves when he knows it may be for the last time, long and hard, with a desperation of love that feels frustrated by the very lips it is touching. At last he took his lips from hers.

"Domini," he said, and his voice was steady and clear, almost hard, "you want to know what it is that makes me unhappy even in our love—desperately unhappy. It is this. I believe in God, I love God, and I have insulted Him. I have tried to forget God, to deny Him, to put human love higher than love for Him. But always I am haunted by the thought of God, and that thought makes me despair. Once, when I was young, I gave myself to God solemnly. I have broken the vows I made. I have—I have—"

The hardness went out of his voice. He broke down for a moment and was silent.

"You gave yourself to God," she said. "How?"

He tried to meet her questioning eyes, but could not.

"I—I gave myself to God as a monk," he answered after a pause.

As he spoke Domini saw before her in the moonlight De Trevignac. He cast a glance of horror at the tent, bent over her, made the sign of the Cross, and vanished. In his place stood Father Roubier, his eyes shining, his hand upraised, warning her against Androvsky. Then he, too, vanished, and she seemed to see Count Anteoni dressed as an Arab and muttering words of the Koran.

"Domini!"

"Domini, did you hear me? Domini! Domini!"

She felt his hands on her wrists.

"You are the Trappist!" she said quietly, "of whom the priest told me. You are the monk from the Monastery of El-Largani who disappeared after twenty years."

"Yes," he said, "I am he."

"What made you tell me? What made you tell me?"

There was agony now in her voice.

"You asked me to speak, but it was not that. Do you remember last night when I said that God must bless you? You answered, 'He has blessed me. He has given me you, your love, your truth.' It is that which makes me speak. You have had my love, not my truth. Now take my truth. I've kept it from you. Now I'll give it you. It's black, but I'll give it you. Domini! Domini! Hate me to-night, but in your hatred believe that I never loved you as I love you now."