“Domini, take me where you will. If it is to Beni-Mora I will go. But—but—afterwards?”
“Afterwards——” she said.
Then she stopped.
The little note of the frog sounded again and again by the still water among the reeds. The moon was higher in the sky. “Don’t let us think of afterwards, Boris,” she said at length. “That song we have heard together, that song we love—‘No one but God and I knows what is in my heart.’ I hear it now so often, always almost. It seems to gather meaning, it seems to—God knows what is in your heart and mine. He will take care of the—afterwards. Perhaps in our hearts already He has put a secret knowledge of the end.”
“Has He—has He put it—that knowledge—into yours?”
“Hush!” she said.
They spoke no more that night.
CHAPTER XXIX
The caravan of Domini and Androvsky was leaving Arba.
Already the tents and the attendants, with the camels and the mules, were winding slowly along the plain through the scrub in the direction of the mountains, and the dark shadow which indicated the oasis of Beni-Mora. Batouch was with them. Domini and Androvsky were going to be alone on this last stage of their desert journey. They had mounted their horses before the great door of the bordj, said goodbye to the Sheikh of Arba, scattered some money among the ragged Arabs gathered to watch them go, and cast one last look behind them.