She recollected his words.
“No,” she replied, and there was a warmth of joy, almost of pride, in her voice. “I am not alone.”
Count Anteoni was standing with one hand on her horse’s neck. As she spoke, his hand dropped down.
“I have been away from Beni-Hassan,” he said slowly. “The marabout and I have been travelling in the south and only returned yesterday. I have heard no news for a long time from Beni-Mora, but I know. You are Madame Androvsky.”
“Yes,” she answered; “I am Madame Androvsky.”
There was a silence between them. In it she heard the dripping water in the fountain. At last Count Anteoni spoke again.
“It was written,” he said quietly. “It was written in the sand.”
She thought of the sand-diviner and was silent. An oppression of spirit had suddenly come upon her. It seemed to her connected with something physical, something obscure, unusual, such as she had never felt before. It was, she thought, as if her body at that moment became more alive than it had ever been, and as if that increase of life within her gave to her a peculiar uneasiness. She was startled. She even felt alarmed, as at the faint approach of something strange, of something that was going to alter her life. She did not know at all what it was. For the moment a sense of confusion and of pain beset her, and she was scarcely aware with whom she was, or where. The sensation passed and she recovered herself and met Count Anteoni’s eyes quietly.
“Yes,” she answered; “all that has happened to me here in Africa was written in the sand and in fire.”
“You are thinking of the sun.”