rounded by absolutely thoughtless people with thoughtful faces and
mysterious eyes--wells without truth at the bottom of them."

She laughed.

"No one must think here but you!"

"I prefer to keep all the folly to myself. Is not that a grand
cocoanut?"

He pointed to a tree so tall that it seemed soaring to heaven.

"Yes, indeed. Like the one that presides over the purple dog."

"You have seen my fetish?"

"Smain showed him to me, with reverence."

"Oh, he is king here. The Arabs declare that on moonlight nights they
have heard him joining in the chorus of the Kabyle dogs."

"You speak almost as if you believed it."

"Well, I believe more here than I believe anywhere else. That is partly
why I come here."

"I can understand that--I mean believing much here."

"What! Already you feel the spell of Beni-Mora, the desert spell! Yes,
there is enchantment here--and so I never stay too long."

"For fear of what?"

Count Anteoni was walking easily beside her. He walked from the hips,
like many Sicilians, swaying very slightly, as if he liked to be aware
how supple his body still was. As Domini spoke he stopped. They were now
at a place where four paths joined, and could see four vistas of green
and gold, of magical sunlight and shadow.

"I scarcely know; of being carried who knows where--in mind or heart.
Oh, there is danger in Beni-Mora, Madame, there is danger. This
startling air is full of influences, of desert spirits."

He looked at her in a way she could not understand--but it made her
think of the perfume-seller in his little dark room, and of the sudden
sensation she had had that mystery coils, like a black serpent, in the
shining heart of the East.

"And now, Madame, which path shall we take? This one leads to my
drawing-room, that on the right to the Moorish bath."

"And that?"

"That one goes straight down to the wall that overlooks the Sahara."

"Please let us take it."

"The desert spirits are calling to you? But you are wise. What makes
this garden remarkable is not its arrangement, the number and variety of
its trees, but the fact that it lies flush with the Sahara--like a man's
thoughts of truth with Truth, perhaps."

He turned up the tail of the sentence and his harsh voice gave a little
grating crack.

"I don't believe they are so different from one another as the garden
and the desert."

She looked at him directly.

"It would be too ironical."

"But nothing is," the Count sai