eel that I am going out to freedom, to more than freedom." He
stretched out his arms above his head.

"Yet you have stayed always in this garden all these days."

"I was waiting for my summons, as you will wait for yours."

"What summons could I have?"

"It will come!" he said with conviction. "It will come!" She was silent,
thinking of the diviner's vision in the sand, of the caravan of camels
disappearing in the storm towards the south. Presently she asked him:

"Are you ever coming back?"

He looked at her in surprise, then laughed.

"Of course. What are you thinking?"

"That perhaps you will not come back, that perhaps the desert will keep
you."

"And my garden?"

She looked out across the tiny sand-path and the running rill of water
to the great trees stirred by the cool breeze of dawn.

"It would miss you."

After a moment, during which his bright eyes followed hers, he said:

"Do you know, I have a great belief in the intuitions of good women?"

"Yes?"

"An almost fanatical belief. Will you answer me a question at once,
without consideration, without any time for thought?"

"If you ask me to."

"I do ask you."

"Then----?"

"Do you see me in this garden any more?"

A voice answered:

"No."

It was her own, yet it seemed another's voice, with which she had
nothing to do.

A great feeling of sorrow swept over her as she heard it.

"Do come back!" she said.

The Count had got up. The brightness of his eyes was obscured.

"If not here, we shall meet again," he said slowly.

"Where?"

"In the desert."

"Did the Diviner--? No, don't tell me."

She got up too.

"It is time for you to start?"

"Nearly."

A sort of constraint had settled over them. She felt it painfully for a
moment. Did it proceed from something in his mind or in hers? She could
not tell. They walked slowly down one of the little paths and presently
found themselves before the room in which sat the purple dog.

"If I am never to come back I must say good-bye to him," the Count said.

"But you will come back."

"That voice said 'No.'"

"It was a lying voice."

"Perhaps."

They looked in at the window and met the ferocious eyes of the dog.

"And if I never come back will he bay the moon for his old master?" said
the Count with a whimsical, yet sad, smile. "I put him here. And will
these trees, many of which I planted, whisper a regret? Absurd, isn't
it, Miss Enfilden? I never can feel that the growing