She spoke quite carelessly and was surprised to see him look at her as if with sudden suspicion and immediately help himself to the gazelle.
This man was perpetually giving a touch of the whip to her curiosity to keep it alert. Yet she felt oddly at ease with him. He seemed somehow part of her impression of the desert, and now, as they sat under the fig tree between the high earth walls, and at their al fresco meal in unbroken silence—for since her last remark Androvsky had kept his eyes down and had not uttered a word—she tried to imagine the desert without him.
She thought of the gorge of El-Akbara, the cold, the darkness, and then the sun and the blue country. They had framed his face. She thought of the silent night when the voice of the African hautboy had died away. His step had broken its silence. She thought of the garden of Count Anteoni, and of herself kneeling on the hot sand with her arms on the white parapet and gazing out over the regions of the sun, of her dream upon the tower, of her vision when Irena danced. He was there, part of the noon, part of the twilight, chief surely of the worshippers who swept on in the pale procession that received gifts from the desert’s hands. She could no longer imagine the desert without him. The almost painful feeling that had come to her in the garden—of the human power to distract her attention from the desert power—was dying, perhaps had completely died away. Another feeling was surely coming to replace it; that Androvsky belonged to the desert more even than the Arabs did, that the desert spirits were close about him, clasping his hands, whispering in his ears, and laying their unseen hands about his heart. But——
They had finished their meal. Domini set her chair once more in front of the sluggish stream, while honest Mustapha bounded, with motions suggestive of an ostentatious panther, to get the coffee. Androvsky followed her after an instant of hesitation.
“Do smoke,” she said.
He lit a small cigar with difficulty. She did not wish to watch him, but she could not help glancing at him once or twice, and the conviction came to her that he was unaccustomed to smoking. She lit a cigarette, and saw him look at her with a sort of horrified surprise which changed to staring interest. There was more boy, more child in this man than in any man she had ever known. Yet at moments she felt as if he had penetrated more profoundly into the dark and winding valleys of experience than all the men of her acquaintance.
“Monsieur Androvsky,” she said, looking at the slow waters of the stream slipping by towards the hidden gardens, “is the desert new to you?”
She longed to know.
“Yes, Madame.”
“I thought perhaps—I wondered a little whether you had travelled in it already.”