fanned. The thought of the crucifix faded. It was as if
the fire destroyed it and it became ashes--then nothing. She fixed her
eyes on the distant fire of the Arabs, which was beginning to die down
slowly as the night grew deeper.

"I have doubted many things," he said. "I've been afraid."

"You!" she said.

"Yes. You know it."

"How can I? Haven't I forgotten everything--since that day in the
garden?"

He drew up her hand and put it against his heart.

"I'm jealous of the desert even," he whispered. "I won't let you touch
it any more tonight."

He looked into her eyes and saw that she was looking at the distant
fire, steadily, with an intense eagerness.

"Why do you do that?" he said.

"To-night I like to look at fire," she answered.

"Tell me why."

"It is as if I looked at you, at all that there is in you that you have
never said, never been able to say to me, all that you never can say to
me but that I know all the same."

"But," he said, "that fire is----"

He did not finish the sentence, but put up his hand and turned her face
till she was looking, not at the fire, but at him.

"It is not like me," he said. "Men made it, and--it's a fire that can
sink into ashes."

An expression of sudden exaltation shone in her eyes.

"And God made you," she said. "And put into you the spark that is
eternal."

And now again she thought, she dared, she loved to think of the crucifix
and of the moment when he would see it in the tent.

"And God made you love me," she said. "What is it?"

Androvsky had moved suddenly, as if he were going to get up from the
warm ground.

"Did you--?"

"No," he said in a low voice. "Go on, Domini. Speak to me."

He sat still.

A sudden longing came to her to know if to-night he were feeling as
she was the sacredness of their relation to each other. Never had they
spoken intimately of religion or of the mysteries that lie beyond and
around human life. Once or twice, when she had been about to open her
heart to him, to let him understand her deep sense of the things unseen,
something had checked her, something in him. It was as if he had divined
her intention and had subtly turned her from it, without speech, merely
by the force of his inward determination that she should not break
through his reserve. But to-night, with his hand on hers and the starry
darkness above them, with the waste stretching around them, and the
cool air that was like the breath of liberty upon th