e desert's
expense--by the distant moving figure seen through the glasses?

Yes, as she looked at the little white table and thought of all this,
Domini began to feel angry. But she was capable of effort, whether
mental or physical, and now she resolutely switched her mind off from
the antagonistic stranger and devoted her thoughts to the priest,
whose narrow back she saw down the room in the distance. As she ate
her fish--a mystery of the seas of Robertville--she imagined his quiet
existence in this remote place, sunny day succeeding sunny day, each
one surely so like its brother that life must become a sort of dream,
through which the voice of the church bell called melodiously and the
incense rising before the altar shed a drowsy perfume. How strange it
must be really to live in Beni-Mora, to have your house, your work
here, your friendships here, your duties here, perhaps here too the
tiny section of earth which would hold at the last your body. It must be
strange and monotonous, and yet surely rather sweet, rather safe.

The officers lifted their heads from their plates, the fat man stared,
the priest looked quietly up over his napkin, and the Arab waiter
slipped forward with attentive haste. For the swing door of the
_salle-a-manger_ at this moment was pushed open, and the traveller--so
Domini called him in her thoughts--entered and stood looking with
hesitation from one table to another.

Domini did not glance up. She knew who it was and kept her eyes
resolutely on her plate. She heard the Arab speak, a loud noise of stout
boots tramping over the wooden floor, and the creak of a chair receiving
a surely tired body. The traveller sat down heavily. She went on slowly
eating the large Robertville fish, which was like something between a
trout and a herring. When she had finished it she gazed straight before
her at the cloth, and strove to resume her thoughts of the priest's life
in Beni-Mora. But she could not. It seemed to her as if she were back
again in Count Anteoni's garden. She looked once more through the
glasses, and heard the four cries of the Mueddin, and saw the pacing
figure in the burning heat, the Arab bent in prayer, the one who watched
him, the flight. And she was indignant with herself for her strange
inability to govern her mind. It seemed to her a pitiful thing of which
she should be ashamed.

She heard the waiter set down a plate upon the traveller's table, and
then the noise of a liquid bein