The poet cantered forward.
“Madame, it is not safe.”
The sound of his voice made Domini suddenly know what she had not been sure of before—that she wished to be alone with Androvsky.
“Go, Batouch!” she said. “I tell you to go.”
Batouch turned his horse without a word, and disappeared into the darkness of the distant palms.
When they were alone together Domini and Androvsky sat silent on their horses for some minutes. Their faces were turned towards the desert, which was now luminous beneath the moon. Its loneliness was overpowering in the night, and made speech at first an impossibility, and even thought difficult. At last Androvsky said:
“Madame, why did you look at me like that just now, as if you—as if you hesitated to remain alone with me?”
Suddenly she resolved to tell him of her oppression of the night. She felt as if to do so would relieve her of something that was like a pain at her heart.
“Has it never occurred to you that we are strangers to each other?” she said. “That we know nothing of each other’s lives? What do you know of me or I of you?”
He shifted in his saddle and moved the reins from one hand to the other, but said nothing.