ovsky. He had followed
them on horseback. Domini dismissed Batouch at Androvsky's reiterated
request. When they were alone in the sands, Androvsky told Domini that
he had needed to be with her as he had something to tell her. On the
morrow he was going away from Beni-Mora.

His face, while he said this, was turned from Domini, and his voice
sounded as if it spoke to some one at a distance, some one who can hear
as man cannot hear.

Domini said little. But at the sound of his words it seemed to her as if
all outside things she had ever known had foundered; as if with them had
foundered, too, all the bodily powers that were of the essence of her
life. And the desert, which she had so loved, was no longer to her the
desert, sand with a soul in it, blue distances full of a music of
summons, but only a barren waste of dried-up matter, featureless,
desolate, ghastly with the bones of things that had died.

She rode back with Androvsky to Beni-Mora in a silence like that of
death.

But this parting, decreed by the man, was not to be. In the desert these
two human beings had grown to love each other, with a love that had
become a burning passion. And next day when, in the garden of Count
Anteoni, Androvsky came to say farewell to Domini, his love broke all
barriers. He sank on the sand, letting his hands slip down till they
clasped Domini's knees.

"I love you!" he said. "I love you. But don't listen to me. You mustn't
hear it. You mustn't. But I must say it. I can't go till I say it. I
love you! I love you!"

"I am listening," she said. "I must hear it."

Androvsky rose up, put his hands behind Domini, held her, set his lips
on hers, pressing his whole body against hers.

"Hear it!" he said, muttering against her lips. "Hear it! I love you! I
love you!"

In the recesses of the garden Larbi, that idle gardener, played upon his
little flute his eternal song of love, and from the desert, beyond the
white wall, there rose an Arab's voice singing a song of the Sahara, "No
one but God and I knows what is in my heart!"

_IV.--A Nomad's Honeymoon_

As the sand-diviner had foretold, Domini and Androvsky were married in
the church of Beni-Mora, and by the priest who had warned Domini to have
nothing more to do with Androvsky. A terrible sand-storm was raging, and
the desert was blotted out. Nevertheless, when the ceremony was over,
the bride and bridegroom mounted upon a camel, and with their
attendants, set out for t