. And the track was strewn with the bleached bones of camels that
had perished, or that had been slaughtered, on some long desert march.

To the left of them the solitary tower commanded this terrific vision
of desolation, seemed to watch it steadily, yet furtively, with its tiny
loophole eyes.

"We have come into winter," Domini murmured.

She looked at the white of the camels' bones, of the plains, at the grey
white of the sky, at the yellow pallor of the dunes.

"How wonderful! How terrible!" she said.

She drew her horse to one side, a little nearer to Androvsky's.

"Does the Russian in you greet this land?" she asked him.

He did not reply. He seemed to be held in thrall by the sad immensity
before them.

"I realise here what it must be to die in the desert, to be killed by
it--by hunger, by thirst in it," she said presently, speaking, as if to
herself, and looking out over the mirage sea, the mirage snow. "This is
the first time I have really felt the terror of the desert."

Her horse drooped its head till its nose nearly touched the earth, and
shook itself in a long shiver. She shivered too, as if constrained to
echo an animal's distress.

"Things have died here," Androvsky said, speaking at last in a low voice
and pointing with his long-lashed whip towards the camels' skeletons.
"Come, Domini, the horses are tired."

He cast another glance at the tower, and they dismounted by their tent,
which was pitched at the very edge of the steep slope that sank down to
the beast-like shapes of the near dunes.

An hour later Domini said to Androvsky:

"You won't go after gazelle this evening surely?"

They had been having coffee in the tent and had just finished. Androvsky
got up from his chair and went to the tent door. The grey of the sky was
pierced by a gleaming shaft from the sun.

"Do you mind if I go?" he said, turning towards her after a glance to
the desert.

"No, but aren't you tired?"

He shook his head.

"I couldn't ride, and now I can ride. I couldn't shoot, and I'm just
beginning--"

"Go," she said quickly. "Besides, we want gazelle for dinner, Batouch
says, though I don't suppose we should starve without it." She came to
the tent door and stood beside him, and he put his arm around her.

"If I were alone here, Boris," she said, leaning against his shoulder,
"I believe I should feel horribly sad to-day."

"Shall I stay?"

He pressed her against him.

"No. I shall know you are comi