Since the fracas at the dancing-house both the dancer and her victim had
been under lock and key.

"To marry her after she tried to kill him!" said Domini.

"Yes, Madame. He loves her as the palm tree loves the sun. He will take
her to his room, and she will wear a veil, and work for him and never go
out any more."

"What! She will live like the Arab women?"

"Of course, Madame. But there is a very nice terrace on the roof outside
Hadj's room, and Hadj will permit her to take the air there, in the
evening or when it is hot."

"She must love Hadj very much."

"She does, or why should she try to kill him?"

So that was an African love--a knife-thrust and a taking of the veil!
The thought of it added a further complication to the disorder that was
in her mind.

"I will see you after dinner, Batouch," she said.

She felt that she must do something, go somewhere that night. She could
not remain quiet.

Batouch drew himself up and threw out his broad chest. His air gave
place to importance, and, as he leaned against the white pillar of the
arcade, folded his ample burnous round him, and glanced up at the sky he
saw, in fancy, a five-franc piece glittering in the chariot of the moon.

The priest did not come to dinner that night, but Androvsky was already
at his table when Domini came into the _salle-a-manger_. He got up from
his seat and bowed formally, but did not speak. Remembering his outburst
of the morning she realised the suspicion which her second interview
with the priest had probably created in his mind, and now she was not
free from a feeling of discomfort that almost resembled guilt. For now
she had been led to discuss Androvsky with Father Roubier, and had it
not been almost an apology when she said, "I know he is not evil"? Once
or twice during dinner, when her eyes met Androvsky's for a moment, she
imagined that he must know why she had been at the priest's house, that
anger was steadily increasing in him.

He was a man who hated to be observed, to be criticised. His
sensitiveness was altogether abnormal, and made her wonder afresh where
his previous life had been passed. It must surely have been a very
sheltered existence. Contact with the world blunts the fine edge of our
feeling with regard to others' opinion of us. In the world men learn to
be heedless of the everlasting buzz of comment that attends their goings
out and their comings in. But Androvsky was like a youth, alive to the
tiniest wh