ere you feel Amara in the same way brooding over the sands. It's as if
the sands were full of voices. Doesn't it excite you?"

"Yes," he said. "But"--and he turned in his saddle and looked back--"I
feel as if the solitudes were safer."

"We can return to them."

"Yes."

"We are splendidly free. There's nothing to prevent us leaving Amara
tomorrow."

"Isn't there?" he answered, fixing his eyes upon the minarets.

"What can there be?"

"Who knows?"

"What do you mean, Boris? Are you superstitious? But you reject the
influence of place. Don't you remember--at Mogar?"

At the mention of the name his face clouded and she was sorry she had
spoken it. Since they had left the hill above the mirage sea they had
scarcely ever alluded to their night there. They had never once talked
of the dinner in camp with De Trevignac and his men, or renewed their
conversation in the tent on the subject of religion. But since that day,
since her words about Androvsky's lack of perfect happiness even with
her far out in the freedom of the desert, Domini had been conscious
that, despite their great love for each other, their mutual passion for
the solitude in which it grew each day more deep and more engrossing,
wrapping their lives in fire and leading them on to the inner abodes of
sacred understanding, there was at moments a barrier between them.

At first she had striven not to recognise its existence. She had
striven to be blind. But she was essentially a brave woman and an almost
fanatical lover of truth for its own sake, thinking that what is called
an ugly truth is less ugly than the loveliest lie. To deny truth is to
play the coward. She could not long do that. And so she quickly learned
to face this truth with steady eyes and an unflinching heart.

At moments Androvsky retreated from her, his mind became remote--more,
his heart was far from her, and, in its distant place, was suffering. Of
that she was assured.

But she was assured, too, that she stood to him for perfection in human
companionship. A woman's love is, perhaps, the only true divining rod.
Domini knew instinctively where lay the troubled waters, what troubled
them in their subterranean dwelling. She was certain that Androvsky was
at peace with her but not with himself. She had said to him in the tent
that she thought he sometimes felt far away from God. The conviction
grew in her that even the satisfaction of his great human love was not
enough for his nature