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 quant.i.ty 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 pa.s.sionate, 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 s.p.a.ces of the sand. Upon their little round hills the Arab villages glowed mysteriously. Many hors.e.m.e.n 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.