“For fear of what?”
Count Anteoni was walking easily beside her. He walked from the hips, like many Sicilians, swaying very slightly, as if he liked to be aware how supple his body still was. As Domini spoke he stopped. They were now at a place where four paths joined, and could see four vistas of green and gold, of magical sunlight and shadow.
“I scarcely know; of being carried who knows where—in mind or heart. Oh, there is danger in Beni-Mora, Madame, there is danger. This startling air is full of influences, of desert spirits.”
He looked at her in a way she could not understand—but it made her think of the perfume-seller in his little dark room, and of the sudden sensation she had had that mystery coils, like a black serpent, in the shining heart of the East.
“And now, Madame, which path shall we take? This one leads to my drawing-room, that on the right to the Moorish bath.”
“And that?”
“That one goes straight down to the wall that overlooks the Sahara.”
“Please let us take it.”
“The desert spirits are calling to you? But you are wise. What makes this garden remarkable is not its arrangement, the number and variety of its trees, but the fact that it lies flush with the Sahara—like a man’s thoughts of truth with Truth, perhaps.”
He turned up the tail of the sentence and his harsh voice gave a little grating crack.