They walked down the winding alleys towards the edge of the garden. The sound of the flute of Larbi died away gradually into silence. Soon they saw before them the great spaces of the Sahara flooded with the blinding glory of the summer sunlight. They stood and looked out over it from the shelter of some pepper trees. No caravans were passing. No Arabs were visible. The desert seemed utterly empty, given over, naked, to the dominion of the sun. While they stood there the nasal voice of the Mueddin rose from the minaret of the mosque of Beni-Mora, uttered its fourfold cry, and died away.
“Boris,” Domini said, “that is for the Arabs, but for us, too, for we belong to the garden of Allah as they do, perhaps even more than they.”
“Yes, Domini.”
She remembered how, long ago, Count Anteoni had stood there with her and repeated the words of the angel to the Prophet, and she murmured them now:
“O thou that art covered, arise, and magnify thy Lord, and purify thy clothes, and depart from uncleanness.”
Then, standing side by side, they prayed, looking at the desert.
CHAPTER XXX
In the evening of that day they left Beni-Mora.
Domini wished to go quietly, but, knowing the Arabs, she feared it would be impossible. Nevertheless, when she paid Batouch in the hotel and thanked him for all his services, she said:
“We’ll say adieu here, Batouch.”