n eager light had come into his eyes. He leaned forward towards her
over the little table and stretched out his hand.

"Yes, together," she said.

But she did not take his hand.

"Domini!" he said, still keeping his hand on the table, "Domini!"

An expression, that was like an expression of agony, flitted over her
face and died away, leaving it calm.

"Let us finish," she said quietly. "Look, they have taken the tents! In
a moment we can go."

The doves were silent. The night was very still in this nest of the
Sahara. Ouardi brought them coffee, and Batouch came to say that the
tents were ready.

"We shall want nothing more to-night, Batouch," Domini said. "Don't
disturb us."

Batouch glanced towards the Cafe Maure. A red light gleamed through
its low doorway. One or two Arabs were moving within. Some of the camp
attendants had joined the squatting men without. A noise of busy voices
reached the tents.

"To-night, Madame," Batouch said proudly, "I am going to tell stories
from the _Thousand and One Nights_. I am going to tell the story of the
young Prince of the Indies, and the story of Ganem, the Slave of Love.
It is not often that in Ain-la-Hammam a poet--"

"No, indeed. Go to them, Batouch. They must be impatient for you."

Batouch smiled broadly.

"Madame begins to understand the Arabs," he rejoined. "Madame will soon
be as the Arabs."

"Go, Batouch. Look--they are longing for you."

She pointed to the desert men, who were gesticulating and gazing towards
the tents.

"It is better so, Madame," he answered. "They know that I am here only
for one night, and they are eager as the hungry jackal is eager for food
among the yellow dunes of the sand."

He threw his burnous over his shoulder and moved away smiling, and
murmuring in a luscious voice the first words of Ganem, the Slave of
Love.

"Let us go now, Boris," Domini said.

He got up at once from the table, and they walked together round the
bordj.

On its further side there was no sign of life. No traveller was resting
there that night, and the big door that led into the inner court was
closed and barred. The guardian had gone to join the Arabs at the Cafe
Maure. Between the shadow cast by the bordj and the shadow cast by
the palm trees stood the two tents on a patch of sand. The oasis was
enclosed in a low earth wall, along the top of which was a ragged edging
of brushwood. In this wall were several gaps. Through one, opposite to
the tent