ain, with a decision that was rare in him.

"Let me send Batouch back to Beni-Mora, Madame."

"Why?" she asked, in a low voice that was full of hesitation.

"You do not need him now."

He was looking at her with a defiant, a challenging expression that was
his answer to her expression of vague distrust and apprehension.

"How do you know that?"

He did not answer the question, but only said:

"It is better here without him. May I send him away, Madame?"

She bent her head. Androvsky rode off and she saw him speaking to
Batouch, who shook his head as if in contradiction.

"Batouch!" she called out. "You can ride back to Beni-Mora. We shall
follow directly."

The poet cantered forward.

"Madame, it is not safe."

The sound of his voice made Domini suddenly know what she had not been
sure of before--that she wished to be alone with Androvsky.

"Go, Batouch!" she said. "I tell you to go."

Batouch turned his horse without a word, and disappeared into the
darkness of the distant palms.

When they were alone together Domini and Androvsky sat silent on their
horses for some minutes. Their faces were turned towards the desert,
which was now luminous beneath the moon. Its loneliness was overpowering
in the night, and made speech at first an impossibility, and even
thought difficult. At last Androvsky said:

"Madame, why did you look at me like that just now, as if you--as if you
hesitated to remain alone with me?"

Suddenly she resolved to tell him of her oppression of the night. She
felt as if to do so would relieve her of something that was like a pain
at her heart.

"Has it never occurred to you that we are strangers to each other?" she
said. "That we know nothing of each other's lives? What do you know of
me or I of you?"

He shifted in his saddle and moved the reins from one hand to the other,
but said nothing.

"Would it seem strange to you if I did hesitate--if even now--"

"Yes," he interrupted violently, "it would seem strange to me."

"Why?"

"You would rely on an Arab and not rely upon me," he said with intense
bitterness.

"I did not say so."

"Yet at first you wished to keep Batouch."

"Yes."

"Then----"

"Batouch is my attendant."

"And I? Perhaps I am nothing but a man whom you distrust; whom--whom
others tell you to think ill of."

"I judge for myself."

"But if others speak ill of me?"

"It would not influence me----for long."

She added the last words after a pause.