am going. I am going to say good-bye to Count
Anteoni before he starts for his desert journey."

Androvsky stood there without a word.

"Now, do you care to come if I don't find Batouch? Mind, I'm not the
least afraid."

"Perhaps he is there--if you told him." He muttered the words. His
whole manner had changed. Now he looked more than suspicious--cloudy and
fierce.

"Possibly."

She began to descend the stairs. He did not follow her, but stood
looking after her. When she reached the arcade it was deserted. Batouch
had forgotten or had overslept himself. She could have walked on under
the roof that was the floor of the verandah, but instead she stepped out
into the road. Androvsky was above her by the parapet. She glanced up
and said:

"He is not here, but it is of no consequence. Dawn is breaking. _Au
revoir_!"

Slowly he took off his hat. As she went away down the road he was
holding it in his hand, looking after her.

"He does not like the Count," she thought.

At the corner she turned into the street where the sand-diviner had
his bazaar, and as she neared his door she was aware of a certain
trepidation. She did not want to see those piercing eyes looking at her
in the semi-darkness, and she hurried her steps. But her anxiety was
needless. All the doors were shut, all the inhabitants doubtless wrapped
in sleep. Yet, when she had gained the end of the street, she looked
back, half expecting to see an apparition of a thin figure, a tortured
face, to hear a voice, like a goblin's voice, calling after her. Midway
down the street there was a man coming slowly behind her. For a moment
she thought it was the Diviner in pursuit, but something in the gait
soon showed her her mistake. There was a heaviness in the movement
of this man quite unlike the lithe and serpentine agility of Aloui.
Although she could not see the face, or even distinguish the costume in
the morning twilight, she knew it for Androvsky. From a distance he was
watching over her. She did not hesitate, but walked on quickly again.
She did not wish him to know that she had seen him. When she came to the
long road that skirted the desert she met the breeze of dawn that blows
out of the east across the flats, and drank in its celestial purity.
Between the palms, far away towards Sidi-Zerzour, above the long indigo
line of the Sahara, there rose a curve of deep red gold. The sun was
coming up to take possession of his waiting world. She longed to rid