The door of the garden stood wide open, and, as she entered, she saw three magnificent horses prancing upon the sweep of sand in the midst of a little group of Arabs. Smain greeted her with graceful warmth and begged her to follow him to the _fumoir_, where the Count was waiting for her.
"It is good of you!" the Count said, meeting her in the doorway. "I relied on you, you see!"
Breakfast for two was scattered upon the little smoking-tables; coffee, eggs, rolls, fruit, sweetmeats. And everywhere sprigs of orange blossom filled the cool air with delicate sweetness.
"How delicious!" she exclaimed. "A breakfast here! But--no, not there!"
"Why not?"
"That is exactly where he was."
"Aloui! How superst.i.tious you are!"
He moved her table. She sat down near the doorway and poured out coffee for them both.
"You look workmanlike."
She glanced at his riding-dress and long whip. Smoked gla.s.ses hung across his chest by a thin cord.
"I shall have some hard riding, but I"m tough, though you may not think it. I"ve covered many a league of my friend in bygone years."
He tapped an eggsh.e.l.l smartly, and began to eat with appet.i.te.
"How gravely gay you are!" she said, lifting the steaming coffee to her lips. He smiled.
"Yes. To-day I am happy, as a pious man is happy when after a long illness, he goes once more to church."
"The desert seems to be everything to you."
"I feel that I am going out to freedom, to more than freedom." He stretched out his arms above his head.
"Yet you have stayed always in this garden all these days."
"I was waiting for my summons, as you will wait for yours."
"What summons could I have?"
"It will come!" he said with conviction. "It will come!" She was silent, thinking of the diviner"s vision in the sand, of the caravan of camels disappearing in the storm towards the south. Presently she asked him:
"Are you ever coming back?"
He looked at her in surprise, then laughed.
"Of course. What are you thinking?"
"That perhaps you will not come back, that perhaps the desert will keep you."
"And my garden?"
She looked out across the tiny sand-path and the running rill of water to the great trees stirred by the cool breeze of dawn.
"It would miss you."
After a moment, during which his bright eyes followed hers, he said:
"Do you know, I have a great belief in the intuitions of good women?"
"Yes?"
"An almost fanatical belief. Will you answer me a question at once, without consideration, without any time for thought?"
"If you ask me to."
"I do ask you."
"Then----?"
"Do you see me in this garden any more?"
A voice answered:
"No."
It was her own, yet it seemed another"s voice, with which she had nothing to do.
A great feeling of sorrow swept over her as she heard it.
"Do come back!" she said.
The Count had got up. The brightness of his eyes was obscured.
"If not here, we shall meet again," he said slowly.
"Where?"
"In the desert."
"Did the Diviner--? No, don"t tell me."
She got up too.
"It is time for you to start?"
"Nearly."
A sort of constraint had settled over them. She felt it painfully for a moment. Did it proceed from something in his mind or in hers? She could not tell. They walked slowly down one of the little paths and presently found themselves before the room in which sat the purple dog.
"If I am never to come back I must say good-bye to him," the Count said.