e broke on the last words. Tears were shining in his eyes. After
a long silence he said:

"Domini, take me where you will. If it is to Beni-Mora I will go.
But--but--afterwards?"

"Afterwards----" she said.

Then she stopped.

The little note of the frog sounded again and again by the still water
among the reeds. The moon was higher in the sky. "Don't let us think
of afterwards, Boris," she said at length. "That song we have heard
together, that song we love--'No one but God and I knows what is in
my heart.' I hear it now so often, always almost. It seems to gather
meaning, it seems to--God knows what is in your heart and mine. He will
take care of the--afterwards. Perhaps in our hearts already He has put a
secret knowledge of the end."

"Has He--has He put it--that knowledge--into yours?"

"Hush!" she said.

They spoke no more that night.

CHAPTER XXIX

The caravan of Domini and Androvsky was leaving Arba.

Already the tents and the attendants, with the camels and the mules,
were winding slowly along the plain through the scrub in the direction
of the mountains, and the dark shadow which indicated the oasis of
Beni-Mora. Batouch was with them. Domini and Androvsky were going to be
alone on this last stage of their desert journey. They had mounted their
horses before the great door of the bordj, said goodbye to the Sheikh of
Arba, scattered some money among the ragged Arabs gathered to watch them
go, and cast one last look behind them.

In that mutual, instinctive look back they were both bidding a silent
farewell to the desert, that had sheltered their passion, surely taken
part in the joy of their love, watched the sorrow and the terror grow
in it to the climax at Amara, and was now whispering to them a faint and
mysterious farewell.

To Domini the desert had always been as a great and significant
personality, a personality that had called her persistently to come to
it. Now, as she turned on her horse, she felt as if it were calling her
no longer, as if its mission to her were accomplished, as if its voice
had sunk into a deep and breathless silence. She wondered if Androvsky
felt this too, but she did not ask him. His face was pale and severe.
His eyes stared into the distance. His hands lay on his horse's neck
like tired things with no more power to grip and hold. His lips were
slightly parted, and she heard the sound of his breath coming and going
like the breath of a man who is struggling. Thi