s, the passionate barking of the guard dogs
tied up to the tents on the sand-slopes where the multitudes of fires
gleamed. The sensation of being far away, and close to the heart of the
desert, deepened in her, but she felt now that it was a savage heart,
that there was something terrible in the remoteness. In the faint
moonlight the tent cast black shadows upon the wintry whiteness of the
sands, that rose and fell like waves of a smooth but foam-covered sea.
And the shadow of the sleeping-tent looked the blackest of them all.
For she began to feel as if there was another darkness about it than the
darkness that it cast upon the sand. Her husband's face that night as
he came in from the dunes had been dark with a shadow cast surely by his
soul. And she did not know what it was in his soul that sent forth the
shadow.

"Boris!"

She was at the door of the sleeping-tent. He did not answer.

"Boris!"

He came in from the farther tent that he used as a dressing-room,
carrying a lit candle in his hand. She went up to him with a movement of
swift, ardent sincerity.

"You felt ill in the city? Did Batouch let you come back alone?"

"I preferred to be alone."

He set down the candle on the table, and moved so that the light of it
did not fall upon his face. She took his hands in hers gently. There was
no response in his hands. They remained in hers, nervelessly. They
felt almost like dead things in her hands. But they were not cold, but
burning hot.

"You have fever!" she said.

She let one of his hands go and put one of hers to his forehead.

"Your forehead is burning, and your pulses--how they are beating! Like
hammers! I must--"

"Don't give me anything, Domini! It would be useless."

She was silent. There was a sound of hopelessness in his voice that
frightened her. It was like the voice of a man rejecting remedies
because he knew that he was stricken with a mortal disease.

"Why did that priest come here to-night?" he asked.

They were both standing up, but now he sat down in a chair heavily,
taking his hand from hers.

"Merely to pay a visit of courtesy."

"At night?"

He spoke suspiciously. Again she thought of Mogar, and of how, on his
return from the dunes, he had said to her, "There is a light in the
tower." A painful sensation of being surrounded with mystery came upon
her. It was hateful to her strong and frank nature. It was like a miasma
that suffocated her soul.

"Oh, Boris," she exclaimed