“You must go to him. Of course. Of course. This sun is a blessing. Still, it brings fever sometimes, especially to strangers. We sand-rascals—eh, Madame!” he laughed, but the laugh had lost its sonorous ring—“we can stand it. It’s our friend. But for travellers sometimes it’s a little bit too much. But now, mind, I’m a bit of a doctor, and if to-morrow your husband is no better I might—anyhow”—he looked again longingly at the bon-bons and the cigars—“if you’ll allow me I’ll call to know how he is.”
“Thank you, Monsieur.”
“Not at all, Madame, not at all! I can set him right in a minute, if it’s anything to do with the sun, in a minute. Ah, here’s Belgassem!”
The soldier stood like a statue without, bearing the lantern. The priest hesitated. He was holding the burnt-out cigar in his hand, and now he glanced at it and then at the cigar-box. A plaintive expression overspread his bronzed and bearded face. It became almost piteous. Quickly Domini wait to the table, took two cigars from the box and came back.
“You must have a cigar to smoke on the way.”
“Really, Madame, you are too good, but—well, I rarely refuse a fine cigar, and these—upon my word—are—”
He struck a match on his broad-toed boot. His demeanour was becoming cheerful again. Domini gave the other cigar to the soldier.
“Good-night, Madame. A demain then, a demain! I trust your husband may be able to rest. A demain! A demain!”
The light moved away over the dunes and dropped down towards the city. Then Domini hurried across the sand to the sleeping-tent. As she went she was acutely aware of the many distant noises that rose up in the night to the pale crescent of the young moon, the pulsing of the tomtoms in the city, the faint screaming of the pipes that sounded almost like human beings in distress, the passionate barking of the guard dogs tied up to the tents on the sand-slopes where the multitudes of fires gleamed. The sensation of being far away, and close to the heart of the desert, deepened in her, but she felt now that it was a savage heart, that there was something terrible in the remoteness. In the faint moonlight the tent cast black shadows upon the wintry whiteness of the sands, that rose and fell like waves of a smooth but foam-covered sea. And the shadow of the sleeping-tent looked the blackest of them all. For she began to feel as if there was another darkness about it than the darkness that it cast upon the sand. Her husband’s face that night as he came in from the dunes had been dark with a shadow cast surely by his soul. And she did not know what it was in his soul that sent forth the shadow.
“Boris!”