"You are going away?"

"Yes, I am going away."

She saw more quiet questions fluttering on his lips, and added:

"And now I want to walk in the garden alone."

He waved his hand towards the trees.

"It is all for Madame. Monsieur the Count has always said so. But
Monsieur?"

"He is in Beni-Mora. He is coming presently to fetch me."

Then she turned away and walked slowly across the great sweep of sand
towards the trees and was taken by their darkness. She heard again the
liquid bubbling of the hidden waterfall, and was again companioned by
the mystery of this desert Paradise, but it no longer whispered to
her of peace for her. It murmured only its own personal peace and
accentuated her own personal agony and struggle. All that it had been it
still was, but all that she had been in it was changed. And she felt the
full terror of Nature's equanimity environing the fierce and tortured
lives of men.

As she walked towards the deepest recesses of the garden along the
winding tracks between the rills she had no sensation of approaching the
hidden home of the Geni of the garden. Yet she remembered acutely all
her first feelings there. Not one was forgotten. They returned to her
like spectres stealing across the sand. They lurked like spectres among
the dense masses of the trees. She strove not to see their pale shapes,
not to hear their terrible voices. She strove to draw calm once more
from this infinite calm of silently-growing things aspiring towards the
sun. But with each step she took the torment in her heart increased. At
last she came to the deeper darkness and the blanched sand, and saw
pine needles strewed about her feet. Then she stood still, instinctively
listening for a sound that would complete the magic of the garden and
her own despair. She waited for it. She even felt, strangely, that she
wanted, that she needed it--the sound of the flute of Larbi playing his
amorous tune. But his flute to-day was silent. Had he fallen out of an
old love and not yet found a new? or had he, perhaps, gone away? or was
he dead? For a long time she stood there, thinking about Larbi. He and
his flute and his love were mingled with her life in the desert. And she
felt that she could not leave the desert without bidding them farewell.

But the silence lasted and she went on and came to the _fumoir_. She
went into it at once and sat down. She was going to wait for Androvsky
here.

Her mind was straying curiously to-day.