ou to know that I am quite a stranger to all African
things and people," she said. "That is why I am liable to fall into
mistakes in such a place as this. Ah, there is the hotel, and my maid on
the verandah. I want to thank you again for looking after me."

They were at a few steps from the hotel door in the road. The man
stopped, and Domini stopped too.

"Madame," he said earnestly, with a sort of hardly controlled
excitement, "I--I am glad. I was ashamed--I was ashamed."

"Why?"

"Of my conduct--of my awkwardness. But you will forgive it. I am not
accustomed to the society of ladies--like you. Anything I have done I
have not done out of rudeness. That is all I can say. I have not done it
out of rudeness."

He seemed to be almost trembling with agitation.

"I know, I know," she said. "Besides, it was nothing."

"Oh, no, it was abominable. I understand that. I am not so coarse-fibred
as not to understand that."

Domini suddenly felt that to take his view of the matter, exaggerated
though it was, would be the kindest course, even the most delicate.

"You were rude to me," she said, "but I shall forget it from this
moment."

She held out her hand. He grasped it, and again she felt as if a furnace
were pouring its fiery heat upon her.

"Good-night."

"Good-night, Madame. Thank you."

She was going away to the hotel door, but she stopped.

"My name is Domini Enfilden," she said in English.

The man stood in the road looking at her. She waited. She expected him
to tell her his name. There was a silence. At last he said hesitatingly,
in English with a very slight foreign accent:

"My name is Boris--Boris Androvsky."

"Batouch told me you were English," she said.

"My mother was English, but my father was a Russian from Tiflis. That is
my name."

There was a sound in his voice as if he were insisting like a man making
an assertion not readily to be believed.

"Good-night," Domini said again.

And she went away slowly, leaving him standing on the moonlit road.

He did not remain there long, nor did he follow her into the hotel.
After she had disappeared he stood for a little while gazing up at the
deserted verandah upon which the moon-rays fell. Then he turned and
looked towards the village, hesitated, and finally walked slowly back
towards the tiny, shrouded alley in which on the narrow staircases the
painted girls sat watching in the night.

CHAPTER IX

On the following morning Batouch arri