e
pointed with his whip towards the dreamlike blue of the far horizon. She
leaned over, looking down at him and at his horse, which fidgeted and
arched his white neck and dropped foam from his black flexible lips.

"No," she answered after a moment of thought. "I must speak the truth,
you know."

"To me, always."

"I feel that you were right, that my summons has not yet come to me."

"And when it comes?"

"I shall obey it without fear, even if I go in the storm and the
darkness."

He glanced at the radiant sky, at the golden beams slanting down upon
the palms.

"The Coran says: 'The fate of every man have We bound about his neck.'
May yours be as serene, as beautiful, as a string of pearls."

"But I have never cared to wear pearls," she answered.

"No? What are your stones?"

"Rubies."

"Blood! No others?"

"Sapphires."

"The sky at night."

"And opals."

"Fires gleaming across the white of moonlit dunes. Do you remember?"

"I remember."

"And you do not ask me for the end of the Diviner's vision even now?"

"No."

She hesitated for an instant. Then she added:

"I will tell you why. It seemed to me that there was another's fate in
it as well as my own, and that to hear would be to intrude, perhaps,
upon another's secrets."

"That was your reason?"

"My only reason." And then she added, repeating consciously Androvsky's
words: "I think there are things that should be let alone."

"Perhaps you are right."

A stronger breath of the cool wind came over the flats, and all the palm
trees rustled. Through the garden there was a delicate stir of life.

"My children are murmuring farewell," said the Count. "I hear them. It
is time! Good-bye, Miss Enfilden--my friend, if I may call you so.
May Allah have you in his keeping, and when your summons comes, obey
it--alone."

As he said the last word his grating voice dropped to a deep note of
earnest, almost solemn, gravity. Then he lifted his hat, touched his
horse with his heel, and galloped away into the sun.

Domini watched the three riders till they were only specks on the
surface of the desert. Then they became one with it, and were lost in
the dreamlike radiance of the morning. But she did not move. She sat
with her eyes fixed up on the blue horizon. A great loneliness had
entered into her spirit. Till Count Anteoni had gone she did not realise
how much she had become accustomed to his friendship, how near their
sympathies had been. But di