where she heard the movement of Androvsky, stirred in her hair, she felt
reckless, wayward, savage--and something more. A cry rose in her that
was like the cry of a stranger, who yet was of her and in her, and from
whom she would not part.

Again the lamp flame flickered upon the crucifix. Quickly, while she saw
the crucifix plainly, she went forward to the bed and fell on her knees
by it, bending down her face upon its whiteness.

When Androvsky had fastened the tent door he turned round and saw her
kneeling. He stood quite still as if petrified, staring at her. Then,
as the flame, now sheltered from the wind, burned steadily, he saw the
crucifix. He started as if someone had struck him, hesitated, then, with
a look of fierce and concentrated resolution on his face, went swiftly
to the crucifix and pulled it from the canvas roughly. He held it in his
hand for an instant, then moved to the tent door and stooped to unfasten
the cords that held it to the pegs, evidently with the intention of
throwing the crucifix out into the night. But he did not unfasten
the cords. Something--some sudden change of feeling, some secret and
powerful reluctance--checked him. He thrust the crucifix into his
pocket. Then, returning to where Domini was kneeling, he put his arms
round her and drew her to her feet.

She did not resist him. Still holding her in his arms he blew out the
lamp.

CHAPTER XIX

The Arabs have a saying, "In the desert one forgets everything, one
remembers nothing any more."

To Domini it sometimes seemed the truest of all the true and beautiful
sayings of the East. Only three weeks had passed away since the first
halt at Arba, yet already her life at Beni-Mora was faint in her mind
as the dream of a distant past. Taken by the vast solitudes, journeying
without definite aim from one oasis to another through empty regions
bathed in eternal sunshine, camping often in the midst of the sand
by one of the wells sunk for the nomads by the French engineers,
strengthened perpetually, yet perpetually soothed, by airs that were
soft and cool, as if mingled of silk and snow, they lived surely in a
desert dream with only a dream behind them. They had become as one with
the nomads, whose home is the moving tent, whose hearthstone is the
yellow sand of the dunes, whose God is liberty.

Domini loved this life with a love which had already become a passion.
All that she had imagined that the desert might be to her she foun