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And under this blanching heaven the desert, and all things and people of the oasis of Beni-Mora, assumed an aspect of apprehension, as if they felt themselves to be in the thrall of some power whose omnipotence they could not question and whose purpose they feared.
His face was grave, even sad, though when he saw her waiting for him he smiled. "You have been all this time with the priest?" she said. "Nearly all. I walked for a little while in the city. And you?" "I rode out and met a friend." "A friend?" he said, as if startled. "Yes, from Beni-Mora Count Anteoni. He has been here to pay me a visit." She pulled forward a basket-chair for him.
This is my special thinking place." "How strange!" Domini exclaimed impulsively, and leaning forward on the divan. "Is it?" "I only mean that already Beni-Mora has seemed to me the ideal place for that." "For thought?" "For finding out interior truth." Count Anteoni looked at her rather swiftly and searchingly.
The religion which had almost seemed to be slipping from her she had grasped firmly again. Her soul had arrived in Beni-Mora an invalid and had become a convalescent. It had been reclining wearily, fretfully. In Beni-Mora it had stood up, walked, sung as the morning stars sang together. But then why? If this was to be the end why why?
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 did not move till the train ran into Beni-Mora, and the eager faces of countless Arabs stared in upon them from the scorched field of manoeuvres where Spahis were exercising in the gathering twilight. Having given her luggage ticket to a porter, Domini passed out of the station followed by Suzanne, who looked and walked like an exhausted marionette.
He leaned back in his chair and shook with the mirth his own remarks had roused. "We are ruffians of the sun!" he repeated with gusto. "And we must be forgiven everything." Although clad in a soutane he looked, at that moment, like a type of the most joyous tolerance, and Domini could not help mentally comparing him with the priest of Beni-Mora. What would Father Roubier think of Father Beret?
"And it happened in some remote place in the Sahara Desert?" "In Beni-Kouidar. I was with Henry Marnier in Beni-Kouidar at the time." "Go ahead!" said young England more eagerly. "Poor Marnier was not an old friend of mine, but an acquaintance whom I had met casually at Beni-Mora, which is known as a health resort." "I send patients there sometimes," said the doctor.
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.
But before she had time for speech or action he turned to her and said, lifting up his hands with the reins in them and then dropping them down heavily upon his horse's neck: "Madame, I wanted to tell you that to-morrow I " He stopped. "Yes?" she said. He turned his head away from her till she could not see his face. "To-morrow I am leaving Beni-Mora." "To-morrow!" she said.
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