She wished to be strictly
truthful, and to-night she was not sure that the words of the priest had
made no impression upon her.

"For long!" he repeated. Then he said abruptly, "The priest hates me."

"No."

"And Count Anteoni?"

"You interested Count Anteoni greatly."

"Interested him!"

His voice sounded intensely suspicious in the night.

"Don't you wish to interest anyone? It seems to me that to be
uninteresting is to live eternally alone in a sunless desert."

"I wish--I should like to think that I--" He stopped, then said, with a
sort of ashamed determination: "Could I ever interest you, Madame?"

"Yes," she answered quietly.

"But you would rather be protected by an Arab than by me. The priest
has--"

"To-night I do not seem to be myself," she said, interrupting him.
"Perhaps there is some physical reason. I got up very early, and--don't
you ever feel oppressed, suspicious, doubtful of life, people, yourself,
everything, without apparent reason? Don't you know what it is to have
nightmare without sleeping?"

"I! But you are different."

"To-night I have felt--I do feel as if there were tragedy near me,
perhaps coming towards me," she said simply, "and I am oppressed, I am
almost afraid."

When she had said it she felt happier, as if a burden she carried were
suddenly lighter. As he did not speak she glanced at him. The moon rays
lit up his face. It looked ghastly, drawn and old, so changed that she
scarcely recognised it and felt, for a moment, as if she were with a
stranger. She looked away quickly, wondering if what she had seen was
merely some strange effect of the moon, or whether Androvsky was really
altered for a moment by the action of some terrible grief, one of those
sudden sorrows that rush upon a man from the hidden depths of his nature
and tear his soul, till his whole being is lacerated and he feels as
if his soul were flesh and were streaming with the blood from mortal
wounds. The silence between them was long. In it she presently heard a
reiterated noise that sounded like struggle and pain made audible. It
was Androvsky's breathing. In the soft and exquisite air of the desert
he was gasping like a man shut up in a cellar. She looked again towards
him, startled. As she did so he turned his horse sideways and rode away
a few paces. Then he pulled up his horse. He was now merely a black
shape upon the moonlight, motionless and inaudible. She could not take
her eyes from this shape.