is horse and pulled up the reins. Domini said no more.
They had started late. It was night when they reached Ain-la-Hammam. As
they drew near Domini looked before her eagerly through the pale gloom
that hung over the sand. She saw no village, only a very small grove of
palms and near it the outline of a bordj. The place was set in a cup of
the Sahara. All around it rose low hummocks of sand. On two or three of
them were isolated clumps of palms. Here the eyes roamed over no vast
distances. There was little suggestion of space. She drew up her horse
on one of the hummocks and gazed down. She heard doves murmuring in
their soft voices among the trees. The tents were pitched near the
bordj.

"What does Madame think?" asked Batouch. "Does Madame agree with the
Englishman?"

"It is a strange little place," she answered.

She listened to the voices of the doves. A dog barked by the bordj.

"It is almost like a hiding-place," she added.

Androvsky said nothing, but he, too, was gazing intently at the trees
below them, he, too, was listening to the voices of the doves. After a
moment he looked at her.

"Domini," he whispered. "Here--won't you--won't you let me touch your
hand again here?"

"Come, Boris," she answered. "It is late."

They rode down into Ain-la-Hammam.

The tents had all been pitched near together on the south of the bordj,
and separated by it from the tiny oasis. Opposite to them was a Cafe
Maure of the humblest kind, a hovel of baked earth and brushwood, with
earthen divans and a coffee niche. Before this was squatting a group
of five dirty desert men, the sole inhabitants of Ain-la-Hammam. Just
before dinner Domini gave an order to Batouch, and, while they were
dining, Androvsky noticed that their people were busy unpegging the two
sleeping-tents.

"What are they doing?" he said to Domini, uneasily. In his present
condition everything roused in him anxiety. In every unusual action he
discerned the beginning of some tragedy which might affect his life.

"I told Batouch to put our tents on the other side of the bordj," she
answered.

"Yes. But why?"

"I thought that to-night it would be better if we were a little more
alone than we are here, just opposite to that Cafe Maure, and with the
servants. And on the other side there are the palms and the water. And
the doves were talking there as we rode in. When we have finished dinner
we can go and sit there and be quiet."

"Together," he said.

A