His voice was suddenly constrained. She did not pursue the subject, but stroked her horse’s neck and turned her eyes towards the dark green line on the horizon. Now that she was really out in the desert she felt almost bewildered by it, and as if she understood it far less than when she looked at it from Count Anteoni’s garden. The thousands upon thousands of sand humps, each crowned with its dusty dwarf bush, each one precisely like the others, agitated her as if she were confronted by a vast multitude of people. She wanted some point which would keep the eyes from travelling but could not find it, and was mentally restless as the swimmer far out at sea who is pursued by wave on wave, and who sees beyond him the unceasing foam of those that are pressing to the horizon. Whither was she riding? Could one have a goal in this immense expanse? She felt an overpowering need to find one, and looked once more at the green line.
“Do you think we could go as far as that?” she asked Androvsky, pointing with her whip.
“Yes, Madame.”
“It must be an oasis. Don’t you think so?”
“Yes. I can go faster.”
“Keep your rein loose. Don’t pull his mouth. You don’t mind my telling you. I’ve been with horses all my life.”
“Thank you,” he answered.
“And keep your heels more out. That’s much better. I’m sure you could teach me a thousand things; it will be kind of you to let me teach you this.”
He cast a strange look at her. There was gratitude in it, but much more; a fiery bitterness and something childlike and helpless.
“I have nothing to teach,” he said.