A silence had fallen between Domini and Androvsky which neither seemed able to break. They rode on side by side across the sands towards the north through the long day. The tower of Amara faded in the sunshine above the white crests of the dunes. The Arab villages upon their little hills disappeared in the quivering gold. New vistas of desert opened before them, oases crowded with palms, salt lakes and stony ground. They passed by native towns. They saw the negro gardeners laughing among the rills of yellow water, or climbing with bare feet the wrinkled tree trunks to lop away dead branches. They heard tiny goatherds piping, solitary, in the wastes. Dreams of the mirage rose and faded far off on the horizon, rose and faded mystically, leaving no trembling trace behind. And they were silent as the mirage, she in her purpose, he in his wonder. And the long day waned, and towards evening the camp was pitched and the evening meal was prepared. And still they could not speak.

Sometimes Androvsky watched her, and there was a great calm in her face, but there was no rebuke, no smallness of anger, no hint of despair. Always he had felt her strength of mind and body, but never so much as now. Could he rest on it? Dared he? He did not know. And the day seemed to him to become a dream, and the silence recalled to him the silence of the monastery in which he had worshipped God before the stranger came. He thought that in this silence he ought to feel that she was deliberately raising barriers between them, but—it was strange—he could not feel this. In her silence there was no bitterness. When is there bitterness in strength? He rode on and on beside her, and his sense of a dream deepened, helped by the influence of the desert. Where were they going? He did not know. What was her purpose? He could not tell. But he felt that she had a purpose, that her mind was resolved. Now and then, tearing himself with an effort from the dream, he asked himself what it could be. What could be in store for him, for them, after the thing he had told? What could be their mutual life? Must it not be for ever at an end? Was it not shattered? Was it not dust, like the dust of the desert that rose round their horses’ feet? The silence did not tell him, and again he ceased from wondering and the dream closed round him. Were they not travelling in a mirage, mirage people, unreal, phantomlike, who would presently fade away into the spaces of the sun? The sand muffled the tread of the horses’ feet. The desert understood their silence, clothed it in a silence more vast and more impenetrable. And Androvsky had made his effort. He had spoken the truth at last. He could do no more. He was incapable of any further action. As Domini felt herself to be in the hands of God, he felt himself to be in the hands of this woman who had received his confession with this wonderful calm, who was leading him he knew not whither in this wonderful silence.

When the camp was pitched, however, he noticed something that caught him sharply away from the dreamlike, unreal feeling, and set him face to face with fact that was cold as steel. Always till now the dressing-tent had been pitched beside their sleeping-tent, with the flap of the entrance removed so that the two tents communicated. To-night it stood apart, near the sleeping-tent, and in it was placed one of the small camp beds. Androvsky was alone when he saw this. On reaching the halting-place he had walked a little way into the desert. When he returned he found this change. It told him something of what was passing in Domini’s mind, and it marked the transformation of their mutual life. As he gazed at the two tents he felt stricken, yet he felt a curious sense of something that was like—was it not like—relief? It was as if his body had received a frightful blow and on his soul a saint’s hand had been gently laid, as if something fell about him in ruins, and at the same time a building which he loved, and which for a moment he had thought tottering, stood firm before him founded upon rock. He was a man capable of a passionate belief, despite his sin, and he had always had a passionate belief in Domini’s religion. That morning, when she came out to him in the sand, a momentary doubt had assailed him. He had known the thought, “Does she love me still—does she love me more than she loves God, more than she loves his dictates manifested in the Catholic religion?” When she said that word “together” that had been his thought. Now, as he looked at the two tents, a white light seemed to fall upon Domini’s character, and in this white light stood the ruin and the house that was founded upon a rock. He was torn by conflicting sensations of despair and triumph. She was what he had believed. That made the triumph. But since she was that where was his future with her? The monk and the man who had fled from the monastery stood up within him to do battle. The monk knew triumph, but the man was in torment.

Presently, as Androvsky looked at the two tents, the monk in him seemed to die a new death, the man who had left the monastery to know a new resurrection. He was seized by a furious desire to go backward in time, to go backward but a few hours, to the moment when Domini did not know what now she knew. He cursed himself for what he had done. At last he had been able to pray. Yes, but what was prayer now, what was prayer to the man who looked at the two tents and understood what they meant? He moved away and began to walk up and down near to the two tents. He did not know where Domini was. At a little distance he saw the servants busy preparing the evening meal. Smoke rose up before the cook’s tent, curling away stealthily among a group of palm trees, beneath which some Arab boys were huddled, staring with wide eyes at the unusual sight of travellers. They came from a tiny village at a short distance off, half hidden among palm gardens. The camels were feeding. A mule was rolling voluptuously in the sand. At a well a shepherd was watering his flocks, which crowded about him baaing expectantly. The air seemed to breathe out a subtle aroma of peace and of liberty. And this apparent presence of peace, this vision of the calm of others, human beings and animals, added to the torture of Androvsky. As he walked to and fro he felt as if he were being devoured by his passions, as if he were losing the last vestiges of self-control. Never in the monastery, never even in the night when he left it, had he been tormented like this. For now he had a terrible companion whom, at that time, he had not known. Memory walked with him before the tents, the memory of his body, recalling and calling for the past.

He had destroyed that past himself. But for him it might have been also the present, the future. It might have lasted for years, perhaps till death took him or Domini. Why not? He had only had to keep silence, to insist on remaining in the desert, far from the busy ways of men. They could have lived as certain others lived, who loved the free, the solitary life, in an oasis of their own, tending their gardens of palms. Life would have gone like a sunlit dream. And death? At that thought he shuddered. Death—what would that have been to him? What would it be now when it came? He put the thought from him with force, as a man thrusts away from him the filthy hand of a clamouring stranger assailing him in the street.

This evening he had no time to think of death. Life was enough, life with this terror which he had deliberately placed in it.

He thought of himself as a madman for having spoken to Domini. He cursed himself as a madman. For he knew, although he strove furiously not to know, how irrevocable was his act, in consequence of the great strength of her nature. He knew that though she had been to him a woman of fire she might be to him a woman of iron—even to him whom she loved.

How she had loved him!

He walked faster before the tents, to and fro.

How she had loved him! How she loved him still, at this moment after she knew what he was, what he had done to her. He had no doubt of her love as he walked there. He felt it, like a tender hand upon him. But that hand was inflexible too. In its softness there was firmness—firmness that would never yield to any strength in him.

Those two tents told him the story of her strength. As he looked at them he was looking into her soul. And her soul was in direct conflict with his. That was what he felt. She had thought, she had made up her mind. Quietly, silently she had acted. By that action, without a word, she had spoken to him, told him a tremendous thing. And the man—the passionate man who had left the monastery—loose in him now was aflame with an impotent desire that was like a heat of fury against her, while the monk, hidden far down in him, was secretly worshipping her cleanliness of spirit.

But the man who had left the monastery was in the ascendant in him, and at last drove him to a determination that the monk secretly knew to be utterly vain. He made up his mind to enter into conflict with Domini’s strength. He felt that he must, that he could not quietly, without a word, accept this sudden new life of separation symbolised for him by the two tents standing apart.

He stood still. In the distance, under the palms, he saw Batouch laughing with Ouardi. Near them Ali was reposing on a mat, moving his head from side to side, smiling with half-shut, vacant eyes, and singing a languid song.

This music maddened him.

“Batouch!” he called out sharply. “Batouch!”

Batouch stopped laughing, glanced round, then came towards him with a large pace, swinging from his hips.

“Monsieur?”

“Batouch!” Androvsky said.

But he could not go on. He could not say anything about the two tents to a servant.

“Where—where is Madame?” he said almost stammering.

“Out there, Monsieur.”

With a sweeping arm the poet pointed towards a hump of sand crowned by a few palms. Domini was sitting there, surrounded by Arab children, to whom she was giving sweets out of a box. As Androvsky saw her the anger in him burnt up more fiercely. This action of Domini’s, simple, natural though it was, seemed to him in his present condition cruelly heartless. He thought of her giving the order about the tents and then going calmly to play with these children, while he—while he——

“You can go, Batouch,” he said. “Go away.”

The poet stared at him with a superb surprise, then moved slowly towards Ouardi, holding his burnous with his large hands.

Androvsky looked again at the two tents as a man looks at two enemies. Then, walking quickly, he went towards the hump of sand. As he approached it Domini had her side face turned towards him. She did not see him. The little Arabs were dancing round her on their naked feet, laughing, showing their white teeth and opening their mouths wide for the sugar-plums—gaiety incarnate. Androvsky gazed at the woman who was causing this childish joy, and he saw a profound sadness. Never had he seen Domini’s face look like this. It was always white, but now its whiteness was like a whiteness of marble. She moved her head, turning to feed one of the little gaping mouths, and he saw her eyes, tearless, but sadder than if they had been full of tears. She was looking at these children as a mother looks at her children who are fatherless. He did not—how could he?—understand the look, but it went to his heart. He stopped, watching. One of the children saw him, shrieked, pointed. Domini glanced round. As she saw him she smiled, threw the last sugar-plums and came towards him.

“Do you want me?” she said, coming up to him.

His lips trembled.

“Yes,” he said, “I want you.”

Something in his voice seemed to startle her, but she said nothing more, only stood looking at him. The children, who had followed her, crowded round them, touching their clothes curiously.

“Send them away,” he said.

She made the children go, pushing them gently, pointing to the village, and showing the empty box to them. Reluctantly at last they went towards the village, turning their heads to stare at her till they were a long way off, then holding up their skirts and racing for the houses.

“Domini—Domini,” he said. “You can—you can play with children—to-day.”

“I wanted to feel I could give a little happiness to-day,” she answered—“even to-day.”

“To-day when—when to me—to me—you are giving——”

But before her steady gaze all the words he had meant to say, all the words of furious protest, died on his lips.

“To me—to me—” he repeated.

Then he was silent.

“Boris,” she said, “I want to give you one thing, the thing that you have lost. I want to give you back peace.”

“You never can.”

“I must try. Even if I cannot I shall know that I have tried.”

“You are giving me—you are giving me not peace, but a sword,” he said.

She understood that he had seen the two tents.

“Sometimes a sword can give peace.”

“The peace of death.”

“Boris—my dear one—there are many kinds of deaths. Try to trust me. Leave me to act as I must act. Let me try to be guided—only let me try.”

He did not say another word.

That night they slept apart for the first time since their marriage.

“Domini, where are you taking me? Where are we going?”

The camp was struck once more and they were riding through the desert. Domini hesitated to answer his question. It had been put with a sort of terror.

“I know nothing,” he continued. “I am in your hands like a child. It cannot be always so. I must know, I must understand. What is our life to be? What is our future? A man cannot—”

He paused. Then he said:

“I feel that you have come to some resolve. I feel it perpetually. It is as if you were in light and I in darkness, you in knowledge and I in ignorance. You—you must tell me. I have told you all now. You must tell me.”

But she hesitated.

“Not now,” she answered. “Not yet.”

“We are to journey on day by day like this, and I am not to know where we are going! I cannot, Domini—I will not.”

“Boris, I shall tell you.”

“When?”

“Will you trust me, Boris, completely? Can you?”

“How?”

“Boris, I have prayed so much for you that at last I feel that I can act for you. Don’t think me presumptuous. If you could see into my heart you would see that—indeed, I don’t think it would be possible to feel more humble than I do in regard to you.”

“Humble—you, Domini! You can feel humble when you think of me, when you are with me.”

“Yes. You have suffered so terribly. God has led you. I feel that He has been—oh, I don’t know how to say it quite naturally, quite as I feel it—that He has been more intent on you than on anyone I have ever known. I feel that His meaning in regarding to you is intense, Boris, as if He would not let you go.”

“He let me go when I left the monastery.”

“Does one never return?”

Again a sensation almost of terror assailed him. He felt as if he were fighting in darkness something that he could not see.

“Return!” he said. “What do you mean?”

She saw the expression of almost angry fear in his face. It warned her not to give the reins to her natural impulse, which was always towards a great frankness.

“Boris, you fled from God, but do you not think it possible that you could ever return to Him? Have you not taken the first step? Have you not prayed?” His face changed, grew slightly calmer.

“You told me I could pray,” he answered, almost like a child. “Otherwise I—I should not have dared to. I should have felt that I was insulting God.”

“If you trusted me in such a thing, can you not trust me now?”

“But”—he said uneasily—“but this is different, a worldly matter, a matter of daily life. I shall have to know.”

“Yes.”

“Then why should I not know now? At any moment I could ask Batouch.”

“Batouch only knows from day to day. I have a map of the desert. I got it before we left Beni-Mora.”

Something—perhaps a very slight hesitation in her voice just before she said the last words—startled him. He turned on his horse and looked at her hard.

“Domini,” he said, “are we—we are not going back to Beni-Mora?”

“I will tell you to-night,” she replied in a low voice. “Let me tell you tonight.”

He said no more, but he gazed at her for a long time as if striving passionately to read her thoughts. But he could not. Her white face was calm, and she rode looking straight before her, as one that looked towards some distant goal to which all her soul was journeying with her body. There was something mystical in her face, in that straight, far-seeing glance, that surely pierced beyond the blue horizon line and reached a faroff world. What world? He asked himself the question, but no answer came, and he dropped his eyes. A new and horrible sadness came to him, a new sensation of separation from Domini. She had set their bodies apart, and he had yielded. Now, was she not setting something else apart? For, in spite of all, in spite of his treacherous existence with her, he had so deeply and entirely loved her that he had sometimes felt, dared to feel, that in their passion in the desert their souls had been fused together. His was black—he knew it—and hers was white. But had not the fire and the depth of their love conquered all differences, made even their souls one as their bodies had been one? And now was she not silently, subtly, withdrawing her soul from his? A sensation of acute despair swept over him, of utter impotence.

“Domini!” he said, “Domini!”

“Yes,” she answered.

And this time she withdrew her eyes from the blue distance and looked at him.

“Domini, you must trust me.”

He was thinking of the two tents set the one apart from the other.

“Domini, I’ve borne something in silence. I haven’t spoken. I wanted to speak. I tried—but I did not. I bore my punishment—you don’t know, you’ll never know what I felt last—last night—when—I’ve borne that. But there’s one thing I can’t bear. I’ve lived a lie with you. My love for you overcame me. I fell. I have told you that I fell. Don’t—don’t because of that—don’t take away your heart from me entirely. Domini—Domini—don’t do that.”

She heard a sound of despair in his voice.

“Oh, Boris,” she said, “if you knew! There was only one moment when I fancied my heart was leaving you. It passed almost before it came, and now—”

“But,” he interrupted, “do you know—do you know that since—since I spoke, since I told you, you’ve—you’ve never touched me?”

“Yes, I know it,” she replied quietly.

Something told him to be silent then. Something told him to wait till the night came and the camp was pitched once more.

They rested at noon for several hours, as it was impossible to travel in the heat of the day. The camp started an hour before they did. Only Batouch remained behind to show them the way to Ain-la-Hammam, where they would pass the following night. When Batouch brought the horses he said:

“Does Madame know the meaning of Ain-la-Hammam?”

“No,” said Domini. “What is it?”

“Source des tourterelles,” replied Batouch. “I was there once with an English traveller.”

“Source des tourterelles,” repeated Domini. “Is it beautiful, Batouch? It sounds as if it ought to be beautiful.”

She scarcely knew why, but she had a longing that Ain-la-Hammam might be tender, calm, a place to soothe the spirit, a place in which Androvsky might be influenced to listen to what she had to tell him without revolt, without despair. Once he had spoken about the influence of place, about rising superior to it. But she believed in it, and she waited, almost anxiously, for the reply of Batouch. As usual it was enigmatic.

“Madame will see,” he answered. “Madame will see. But the Englishman——”

“Yes?”

“The Englishman was ravished. ‘This,’ he said to me, ‘this, Batouch, is a little Paradise!’ And there was no moon then. To-night there will be a moon.”

“Paradise!” exclaimed Androvsky.

He sprang upon his horse and pulled up the reins. Domini said no more. They had started late. It was night when they reached Ain-la-Hammam. As they drew near Domini looked before her eagerly through the pale gloom that hung over the sand. She saw no village, only a very small grove of palms and near it the outline of a bordj. The place was set in a cup of the Sahara. All around it rose low hummocks of sand. On two or three of them were isolated clumps of palms. Here the eyes roamed over no vast distances. There was little suggestion of space. She drew up her horse on one of the hummocks and gazed down. She heard doves murmuring in their soft voices among the trees. The tents were pitched near the bordj.

“What does Madame think?” asked Batouch. “Does Madame agree with the Englishman?”

“It is a strange little place,” she answered.

She listened to the voices of the doves. A dog barked by the bordj.

“It is almost like a hiding-place,” she added.

Androvsky said nothing, but he, too, was gazing intently at the trees below them, he, too, was listening to the voices of the doves. After a moment he looked at her.

“Domini,” he whispered. “Here—won’t you—won’t you let me touch your hand again here?”

“Come, Boris,” she answered. “It is late.”

They rode down into Ain-la-Hammam.

The tents had all been pitched near together on the south of the bordj, and separated by it from the tiny oasis. Opposite to them was a Cafe Maure of the humblest kind, a hovel of baked earth and brushwood, with earthen divans and a coffee niche. Before this was squatting a group of five dirty desert men, the sole inhabitants of Ain-la-Hammam. Just before dinner Domini gave an order to Batouch, and, while they were dining, Androvsky noticed that their people were busy unpegging the two sleeping-tents.

“What are they doing?” he said to Domini, uneasily. In his present condition everything roused in him anxiety. In every unusual action he discerned the beginning of some tragedy which might affect his life.

“I told Batouch to put our tents on the other side of the bordj,” she answered.

“Yes. But why?”

“I thought that to-night it would be better if we were a little more alone than we are here, just opposite to that Cafe Maure, and with the servants. And on the other side there are the palms and the water. And the doves were talking there as we rode in. When we have finished dinner we can go and sit there and be quiet.”

“Together,” he said.

An eager light had come into his eyes. He leaned forward towards her over the little table and stretched out his hand.

“Yes, together,” she said.

But she did not take his hand.

“Domini!” he said, still keeping his hand on the table, “Domini!”

An expression, that was like an expression of agony, flitted over her face and died away, leaving it calm.

“Let us finish,” she said quietly. “Look, they have taken the tents! In a moment we can go.”

The doves were silent. The night was very still in this nest of the Sahara. Ouardi brought them coffee, and Batouch came to say that the tents were ready.

“We shall want nothing more to-night, Batouch,” Domini said. “Don’t disturb us.”

Batouch glanced towards the Cafe Maure. A red light gleamed through its low doorway. One or two Arabs were moving within. Some of the camp attendants had joined the squatting men without. A noise of busy voices reached the tents.

“To-night, Madame,” Batouch said proudly, “I am going to tell stories from the Thousand and One Nights. I am going to tell the story of the young Prince of the Indies, and the story of Ganem, the Slave of Love. It is not often that in Ain-la-Hammam a poet—”

“No, indeed. Go to them, Batouch. They must be impatient for you.”

Batouch smiled broadly.

“Madame begins to understand the Arabs,” he rejoined. “Madame will soon be as the Arabs.”

“Go, Batouch. Look—they are longing for you.”

She pointed to the desert men, who were gesticulating and gazing towards the tents.

“It is better so, Madame,” he answered. “They know that I am here only for one night, and they are eager as the hungry jackal is eager for food among the yellow dunes of the sand.”

He threw his burnous over his shoulder and moved away smiling, and murmuring in a luscious voice the first words of Ganem, the Slave of Love.

“Let us go now, Boris,” Domini said.

He got up at once from the table, and they walked together round the bordj.

On its further side there was no sign of life. No traveller was resting there that night, and the big door that led into the inner court was closed and barred. The guardian had gone to join the Arabs at the Cafe Maure. Between the shadow cast by the bordj and the shadow cast by the palm trees stood the two tents on a patch of sand. The oasis was enclosed in a low earth wall, along the top of which was a ragged edging of brushwood. In this wall were several gaps. Through one, opposite to the tents, was visible a shallow pool of still water by which tall reeds were growing. They stood up like spears, absolutely motionless. A frog was piping from some hidden place, giving forth a clear flute-like note that suggested glass. It reminded Domini of her ride into the desert at Beni-Mora to see the moon rise. On that night Androvsky had told her that he was going away. That had been the night of his tremendous struggle with himself. When he had spoken she had felt a sensation as if everything that supported her in the atmosphere of life and of happiness had foundered. And now—now she was going to speak to him—to tell him—what was she going to tell him? How much could she, dared she, tell him? She prayed silently to be given strength.

In the clear sky the young moon hung. Beneath it, to the left, was one star like an attendant, the star of Venus. The faint light of the moon fell upon the water of the pool. Unceasingly the frog uttered its nocturne.

Domini stood for a moment looking at the water listening. Then she glanced up at the moon and the solitary star. Androvsky stood by her.

“Shall we—let us sit on the wall, where the gap is,” she said. “The water is beautiful, beautiful with that light on it, and the palms—palms are always beautiful, especially at night. I shall never love any other trees as I love palm trees.”

“Nor I,” he answered.

They sat down on the wall. At first they did not speak any more. The stillness of the water, the stillness of reeds and palms, was against speech. And the little flute-like note that came to them again and again at regular intervals was like a magical measuring of the silence of the night in the desert. At last Domini said, in a low voice:

“I heard that note on the night when I rode out of Beni-Mora to see the moon rise in the desert. Boris, you remember that night?”

“Yes,” he answered.

He was gazing at the pool, with his face partly averted from her, one hand on the wall, the other resting on his knee.

“You were brave that night, Boris,” she said.

“I—I wished to be—I tried to be. And if I had been—”

He stopped, then went on: “If I had been, Domini, really brave, if I had done what I meant to do that night, what would our lives have been to-day?”

“I don’t know. We mustn’t think of that to-night. We must think of the future. Boris, there’s no life, no real life without bravery. No man or woman is worthy of living who is not brave.”

He said nothing.

“Boris, let us—you and I—be worthy of living to-night—and in the future.”

“Give me your hand then,” he answered. “Give it me, Domini.”

But she did not give it to him. Instead she went on, speaking a little more rapidly:

“Boris, don’t rely too much on my strength. I am only a woman, and I have to struggle. I have had to struggle more than perhaps you will ever know. You—must not make—make things impossible for me. I am trying—very hard—to—I’m—you must not touch me to-night, Boris.”

She drew a little farther away from him. A faint breath of air made the leaves of the palm trees rustle slightly, made the reeds move for an instant by the pool. He laid his hand again on the wall from which he had lifted it. There was a pleading sound in her voice which made him feel as if it were speaking close against his heart.

“I said I would tell you to-night where we are going.”

“Tell me now.”

“We are going back to Beni-Mora. We are not very far off from Beni-Mora to-night—not very far.”

“We are going to Beni-Mora!” he repeated in a dull voice. “We are——”

He sat up on the wall, looking straight into her face.

“Why?” he said. His voice was sharp now, sharp with fear.

“Boris, do you want to be at peace, not with me, but with God? Do you want to get rid of your burden of misery, which increases—I know it—day by day?”

“How can I?” he said hopelessly.

“Isn’t expiation the only way? I think it is.”

“Expiation! How—how can—I can never expiate my sin.”

“There’s no sin that cannot be expiated. God isn’t merciless. Come back with me to Beni-Mora. That little church—where you married me—come back to it with me. You could not confess to the—to Father Beret. I feel as if I knew why. Where you married me you will—you must—make your confession.”

“To the priest who—to Father Roubier!”

There was fierce protest in his voice.

“It does not matter who is the priest who will receive your confession. Only make it there—make it in the church at Beni-Mora where you married me.”

“That was your purpose! That is where you are taking me! I can’t go, I won’t! Domini, think what you are doing! You are asking too much—”

“I feel that God is asking that of you. Don’t refuse Him.”

“I cannot go—at Beni-Mora where we—where everything will remind us—”

“Ah, don’t you think I shall feel it too? Don’t you think I shall suffer?”

He felt horribly ashamed when she said that, bowed down with an overwhelming weight of shame.

“But our lives”—he stammered—“but—if I go—afterwards—if I make my confession—afterwards—afterwards?”

“Isn’t it enough to think of that one thing? Isn’t it better to put everything else, every other thought, away? It seems so clear to me that we should go to Beni-Mora. I feel as if I had been told—as a child is told to do something by its father.”

She looked up into the clear sky.

“I am sure I have been told,” she added. “I know I have.”

There was a long silence between them. Androvsky felt that he did not dare to break it. Something in Domini’s face and voice cast out from him the instinct of revolt, of protest. He began to feel exhausted, without power, like a sick man who is being carried by bearers in a litter, and who looks at the landscape through which he is passing with listless eyes, and who scarcely has the force to care whither he is being borne.

“Domini,” he said at last, and his voice sounded very tired, “if you say I must go to Beni-Mora I will go. I have done you a great wrong and—and—”

“Don’t think of me any more,” she said. “Think—think as I do—of—of——

“What am I? I have loved you, I shall always love you, but I am as you are, here for a little while, elsewhere for all eternity. You told him—that man in the monastery—that we are shadows set in a world of shadows.”

“That was a lie,” he interrupted, and the weariness had gone out of his voice. “When I said that I had never loved, I had never loved you.”

“Or was it a half-truth? Aren’t we, perhaps, shadow now in comparison—comparison to what we shall be? Isn’t this world, even this—this desert, this pool with the light on it, this silence of the night around us—isn’t all this a shadow in comparison to the world where we are going, you and I? Boris, I think if we are brave now we shall be together in that world. But if we are cowards now, I think, I am sure, that in that world—the real world—we shall be separated for ever. You and I, whatever we may be, whatever we may have done, at least are one thing—we are believers. We don’t think this is all. If we did it would be different. But we can’t change the truth that is in our souls, and as we can’t change it we must live by it, we must act by it. We can’t do anything else. I can’t—and you? Don’t you feel, don’t you know, that you can’t?”

“To-night,” he said, “I feel that I know nothing—nothing except that I am suffering.”

His voice broke on the last words. Tears were shining in his eyes. After a long silence he said:

“Domini, take me where you will. If it is to Beni-Mora I will go. But—but—afterwards?”

“Afterwards——” she said.

Then she stopped.

The little note of the frog sounded again and again by the still water among the reeds. The moon was higher in the sky. “Don’t let us think of afterwards, Boris,” she said at length. “That song we have heard together, that song we love—‘No one but God and I knows what is in my heart.’ I hear it now so often, always almost. It seems to gather meaning, it seems to—God knows what is in your heart and mine. He will take care of the—afterwards. Perhaps in our hearts already He has put a secret knowledge of the end.”

“Has He—has He put it—that knowledge—into yours?”

“Hush!” she said.

They spoke no more that night.