, and I have noticed it in our dead Cardinal."

"Cardinal Lavigerie."

Androvsky bent over his plate. He seemed suddenly to withdraw his mind
forcibly from this conversation in which he was taking no active part,
as if he refused even to listen to it.

"He is your hero, I know," the Count said sympathetically.

"He did a great deal for me."

"And for Africa. And he was wise."

"You mean in some special way?" Domini said.

"Yes. He looked deep enough into the dark souls of the desert men
to find out that his success with them must come chiefly through his
goodness to their dark bodies. You aren't shocked, Father?"

"No, no. There is truth in that."

But the priest assented rather sadly.

"Mahomet thought too much of the body," he added.

Domini saw the Count compress his lips. Then he turned to Androvsky and
said:

"Do you think so, Monsieur?"

It was a definite, a resolute attempt to draw his guest into the
conversation. Androvsky could not ignore it. He looked up reluctantly
from his plate. His eyes met Domini's, but immediately travelled away
from them.

"I doubt----" he said.

He paused, laid his hands on the table, clasping its edge, and continued
firmly, even with a sort of hard violence:

"I doubt if most good men, or men who want to be good, think enough
about the body, consider it enough. I have thought that. I think it
still."

As he finished he stared at the priest, almost menacingly. Then, as if
moved by an after-thought, he added:

"As to Mahomet, I know very little about him. But perhaps he obtained
his great influence by recognising that the bodies of men are of great
importance, of tremendous--tremendous importance."

Domini saw that the interest of Count Anteoni in his guest was suddenly
and vitally aroused by what he had just said, perhaps even more by his
peculiar way of saying it, as if it were forced from him by some secret,
irresistible compulsion. And the Count's interest seemed to take
hands with her interest, which had had a much longer existence. Father
Roubier, however, broke in with a slightly cold:

"It is a very dangerous thing, I think, to dwell upon the importance of
the perishable. One runs the risk of detracting from the much greater
importance of the imperishable."

"Yet it's the starved wolves that devour the villages," said Androvsky.

For the first time Domini felt his Russian origin. There was a silence.
Father Roubier looked straight before him, but Cou