“But you,” she answered—“did you not feel a tragic influence when we arrived here? Do you remember how you looked at the tower?”
“The tower!” he said, with a quick glance at De Trevignac. “I—why should I look at the tower?”
“I don’t know, but you did, almost as if you were afraid of it.”
“My tower!” said De Trevignac.
Another roar of laughter reached them from the camp fire. It made Domini smile in sympathy, but De Trevignac and Androvsky looked at each other for a moment, the one with a sort of earnest inquiry, the other with hostility, or what seemed hostility, across the circle of lamplight that lay between them.
“A tower rising in the desert emphasises the desolation. I suppose that was it,” Androvsky said, as the laugh died down into Batouch’s throaty chuckle. “It suggests lonely people watching.”
“For something that never comes, or something terrible that comes,” De Trevignac said.
As he spoke the last words Androvsky moved uneasily in his chair, and looked out towards the camp, as if he longed to get up and go into the open air, as if the tent roof above his head oppressed him.
Trevignac turned to Domini.
“In this case, Madame, you were the lonely watcher, and I was the something terrible that came.”