nodded.

"Can you understand it?"

"Not yet. Presently it will get slower, clearer. He always begins like
this."

"Translate it for me."

"Exactly as it is?"

"Exactly as it is."

"Whatever it may be?"

"Whatever it may be."

He glanced at the tortured face of the Diviner and looked grave.

"Remember you have said I am fearless," she said.

He answered:

"Whatever it is you shall know it."

Then they were silent again. Gradually the Diviner's voice grew clearer,
the pace of its words less rapid, but always it sounded mysterious and
inward, less like the voice of a man than the distant voice of a secret.

"I can hear now," whispered the Count.

"What is he saying?"

"He is speaking about the desert."

"Yes?"

"He sees a great storm. Wait a moment!"

The voice spoke for some seconds and ceased, and once again the Diviner
remained absolutely motionless, with his hands extended above the grains
like carven things.

"He sees a great sand-storm, one of the most terrible that has ever
burst over the Sahara. Everything is blotted out. The desert vanishes.
Beni-Mora is hidden. It is day, yet there is a darkness like night. In
this darkness he sees a train of camels waiting by a church."

"A mosque?"

"No, a church. In the church there is a sound of music. The roar of the
wind, the roar of the camels, mingles with the chanting and drowns it.
He cannot hear it any more. It is as if the desert is angry and wishes
to kill the music. In the church your life is beginning."

"My life?"

"Your real life. He says that now you are fully born, that till now
there has been a veil around your soul like the veil of the womb around
a child."

"He says that!"

There was a sound of deep emotion in her voice.

"That is all. The roar of the wind from the desert has silenced the
music in the church, and all is dark."

The Diviner moved again, and formed fresh patterns in the sand with
feverish rapidity, and again began to speak swiftly.

"He sees the train of camels that waited by the church starting on a
desert journey. The storm has not abated. They pass through the oasis
into the desert. He sees them going towards the south."

Domini leaned forward on the divan, looking at Count Anteoni above the
bent body of the Diviner.

"By what route?" she whispered.

"By the route which the natives call the road to Tombouctou."

"But--it is my journey!"

"Upon one of the camels, in a palanquin such as the great