nt Anteoni's eyes were
fixed piercingly upon Androvsky. At last he said:

"May I ask, Monsieur, if you are a Russian?"

"My father was. But I have never set foot in Russia."

"The soul that I find in the art, music, literature of your country is,
to me, the most interesting soul in Europe," the Count said with a ring
of deep earnestness in his grating voice.

Spoken as he spoke it, no compliment could have been more gracious, even
moving. But Androvsky only replied abruptly:

"I'm afraid I know nothing of all that."

Domini felt hot with a sort of shame, as at a close friend's public
display of ignorance. She began to speak to the Count of Russian music,
books, with an enthusiasm that was sincere. For she, too, had found in
the soul from the Steppes a meaning and a magic that had taken her soul
prisoner. And suddenly, while she talked, she thought of the Desert
as the burning brother of the frigid Steppes. Was it the wonder of the
eternal flats that had spoken to her inmost heart sometimes in London
concert-rooms, in her room at night when she read, forgetting time,
which spoke to her now more fiercely under the palms of Africa? At the
thought something mystic seemed to stand in her enthusiasm. The mystery
of space floated about her. But she did not express her thought. Count
Anteoni expressed it for her.

"The Steppes and the Desert are akin, you know," he said. "Despite the
opposition of frost and fire."

"Just what I was thinking!" she exclaimed. "That must be why--"

She stopped short.

"Yes?" said the Count.

Both Father Roubier and Androvsky looked at her with expectancy. But she
did not continue her sentence, and her failure to do so was covered, or
at the least excused, by a diversion that secretly she blessed. At this
moment, from the ante-room, there came a sound of African music, both
soft and barbarous. First there was only one reiterated liquid note,
clear and glassy, a note that suggested night in a remote place. Then,
beneath it, as foundation to it, rose a rustling sound as of a forest
of reeds through which a breeze went rhythmically. Into this stole the
broken song of a thin instrument with a timbre rustic and antique as
the timbre of the oboe, but fainter, frailer. A twang of softly-plucked
strings supported its wild and pathetic utterance, and presently the
almost stifled throb of a little tomtom that must have been placed at a
distance. It was like a beating heart.

The Count and his