--"

His voice failed. He bent forward and took Domini's face between his
hands.

"And yet there are times when I can bless what I have hated. I do bless
it now. I--I love your safety. You--at least you are safe."

"You must share it. I will make you share it."

"You cannot."

"I can. I shall. I feel that we shall be together in soul, and perhaps
to-night, perhaps even to-night."

Androvsky looked profoundly agitated. His hands dropped down.

"I must go," he said. "I must go to the priest."

He got up from the sand.

"Come to the tent, Domini."

She rose to her feet.

"When you come back," she said, "I shall be waiting for you, Boris."

He looked at her. There was in his eyes a piercing wistfulness. He
opened his lips. At that moment Domini felt that he was on the point of
telling her all that she longed to know. But the look faded. The lips
closed. He took her in his arms and kissed her almost desperately.

"No, no," he said. "I'll keep your love--I'll keep it."

"You could never lose it."

"I might."

"Never."

"If I believed that."

"Boris!"

Suddenly burning tears rushed from her eyes.

"Don't ever say a thing like that to me again!" she said with passion.

She pointed to the grave close to them.

"If you were there," she said, "and I was living, and you had died
before--before you had told me--I believe--God forgive me, but I do
believe that if, when you died, I were taken to heaven I should find my
hell there."

She looked through her tears at the words: "Priez pour lui."

"To pray for the dead," she whispered, as if to herself. "To pray for
my dead--I could not do it--I could not. Boris, if you love me you must
trust me, you must give me your sorrow."

The night drew on. Androvsky had gone to the priest. Domini was alone,
sitting before the tent waiting for his return. She had told Batouch and
Ouardi that she wanted nothing more, that no one was to come to the tent
again that night. The young moon was rising over the city, but its light
as yet was faint. It fell upon the cupolas of the Bureau Arabe, the
towers of the mosque and the white sands, whose whiteness it seemed to
emphasise, making them pale as the face of one terror-stricken. The
city wall cast a deep shadow over the moat of sand in which, wrapped
in filthy rags, lay nomads sleeping. Upon the sand-hills the camps were
alive with movement. Fires blazed and smoke ascended before the tents
that made patches of blackness up