stools,
covered with Tunisian thread-work, lay beside them. From the arches of
the window-spaces hung old Moorish lamps of copper, fitted with small
panes of dull jewelled glass, such as may be seen in venerable church
windows. In a round copper brazier, set on one of the window-seats,
incense twigs were drowsily burning and giving out thin, dwarf columns
of scented smoke. Through the archways and the narrow doorway the
dense walls of leafage were visible standing on guard about this airy
hermitage, and the hot purple blossoms of the bougainvillea shed a cloud
of colour through the bosky dimness.

And still the flute of Larbi showered soft, clear, whimsical music from
some hidden place close by.

Domini looked at her host, who was standing by the doorway, leaning one
arm against the ivory-white wall.

"This is my first day in Africa," she said simply. "You may imagine what
I think of your garden, what I feel in it. I needn't tell you. Indeed, I
am sure the travellers you so kindly let in must often have worried you
with their raptures."

"No," he answered, with a still gravity which yet suggested kindness,
"for I leave nearly always before the travellers come. That sounds a
little rude? But you would not be in Beni-Mora at this season, Madame,
if it could include you."

"I have come here for peace," Domini replied simply.

She said it because she felt as if it was already understood by her
companion.

Count Anteoni took down his arm from the white wall and pulled a branch
of the purple flowers slowly towards him through the doorway.

"There is peace--what is generally called so, at least--in Beni-Mora,"
he answered rather slowly and meditatively. "That is to say, there is
similarity of day with day, night with night. The sun shines untiringly
over the desert, and the desert always hints at peace."

He let the flowers go, and they sprang softly back, and hung quivering
in the space beyond his thin figure. Then he added:

"Perhaps one should not say more than that."

"No."

Domini sat down for a moment. She looked up at him with her direct eyes
and at the shaking flowers. The sound of Larbi's flute was always in her
ears.

"But may not one think, feel a little more?" she asked.

"Oh, why not? If one can, if one must? But how? Africa is as fierce and
full of meaning as a furnace, you know."

"Yes, I know--already," she replied.

His words expressed what she had already felt here in Beni-Mora,
surrepti