he porter shut the door.

"Madame!" he exclaimed.

"What is it, Batouch?"

"To-day you have put Hadj to shame."

He smiled broadly.

"I? How? What have I done?"

"Irena is dancing at Onargla, far away in the desert beyond Amara."

"Irena! But--"

"She could not live shut up in a room. She could not wear the veil for
Hadj."

"But then--?"

"She has divorced him, Madame. It is easy here. For a few francs one
can--"

The whistle sounded. The train jerked. Batouch seized her hand, seized
Androvsky's, sprang back to the platform.

"Good-bye, Batouch! Good-bye, Ouardi! Good-bye, Smain!"

The train moved on. As it reached the end of the platform Domini saw an
emaciated figure standing there alone, a thin face with glittering eyes
turned towards her with a glaring scrutiny. It was the sand-diviner. He
smiled at her, and his smile contracted the wound upon his face, making
it look wicked and grotesque like the face of a demon. She sank down on
the seat. For a moment, a hideous moment, she felt as if he personified
Beni-Mora, as if this smile were Beni-Mora's farewell to her and to
Androvsky.

And Irena was dancing at Onargla, far away in the desert.

She remembered the night in the dancing-house, Irena's attack upon Hadj.

That love of Africa was at an end. Was not everything at an end? Yet
Larbi still played upon his flute in the garden of Count Anteoni, still
played the little tune that was as the _leit motif_ of the eternal
renewal of life. And within herself she carried God's mystery of
renewal, even she, with her numbed mind, her tired heart. She, too, was
to help to carry forward the banner of life.

She had come to Beni-Mora in the sunset, and now, in the sunset, she was
leaving it. But she did not lean from the carriage window to watch the
pageant that was flaming in the west. Instead, she shut her eyes
and remembered it as it was on that evening when they, who now were
journeying away from the desert together, had been journeying towards it
together. Strangers who had never spoken to each other. And the evening
came, and the train stole into the gorge of El-Akbara, and still she
kept her eyes closed. Only when the desert was finally left behind,
divided from them by the great wall of rock, did she look up and speak
to Androvsky.

"We met here, Boris," she said.

"Yes," he answered, "at the gate of the desert. I shall never be here
again."

Soon the night fell around them.

* * * * *

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