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If I had known he was coming I should have told you in order that you might have kept away if you wished to. But now that you are here now that Smain has let you in and the Count and Father Roubier must know of it, I am sure you will stay and govern your dislike. You intend to turn back. I see that. Well, I ask you to stay." She was not thinking of herself, but of him.
There was a flaming of distrust in his eyes, his lips were compressed, and his whole body betokened hostility. "I did not understand. I thought Senor Anteoni would be alone here." "Father Roubier is a pleasant companion, sincere and simple. Everyone likes him." "No doubt, Madame. But the fact is I" he hesitated, then added, almost with violence "I do not care for priests." "I am sorry.
Father Roubier, however, broke in with a slightly cold: "It is a very dangerous thing, I think, to dwell upon the importance of the perishable. One runs the risk of detracting from the much greater importance of the imperishable." "Yet it's the starved wolves that devour the villages," said Androvsky. For the first time Domini felt his Russian origin. There was a silence.
Father Roubier looked straight before him, but Count Anteoni's eyes were fixed piercingly upon Androvsky. At last he said: "May I ask, Monsieur, if you are a Russian?" "My father was. But I have never set foot in Russia."
To-night something of Europe and her life there, with its civilised experience and drastic training in the management of woman's relations with humanity in general, crept back under the palm trees and the brilliant stars of Africa; and despite the fatalism condemned by Father Roubier, she was more conscious than she had hitherto been of how others the outside world would be likely to regard her acquaintance with Androvsky.
"And Father Roubier if you included him is too fine-hearted to cherish unworthy suspicions of anyone." She got up. Her voice was full of a subdued, but strong, emotion. "Oh, Monsieur Androvsky!" she said. "Do go over and see him. Make friends with him. Never mind yesterday. I want you to be friends with him, with everyone here. Let us make Beni-Mora a place of peace and good will."
As he spoke Domini saw before her in the moonlight De Trevignac. He cast a glance of horror at the tent, bent over her, made the sign of the Cross, and vanished. In his place stood Father Roubier, his eyes shining, his hand upraised, warning her against Androvsky. Then he, too, vanished, and she seemed to see Count Anteoni dressed as an Arab and muttering words of the Koran. "Domini!"
She did not express it, and did not know that she had shown a sign of it till she heard Father Roubier say: "If you knew how often I have found that what for a moment I believed to be my noblest aspirations had sprung from a tiny, hidden seed of egoism!" At once her anger died away. "That is terribly true," she said. "Of us all, I mean." She got up. "You are going?" "Yes.
When he reached the sacristy he shut himself into it alone for a moment. He sat down on a chair and, leaning his arms upon the wooden table that stood in the centre of the room, bent forward and stared before him at the wall opposite, listening to the howling of the wind. Father Roubier had an almost passionate affection for his little church of Beni-Mora.
She began to speak to Count Anteoni about some absurdity of Batouch, forcing her mind into a light and frivolous mood, and he echoed her tone with a clever obedience for which secretly she blessed him. In a moment they were laughing together with apparent merriment, and Father Roubier smiled innocently at their light-heartedness, believing in it sincerely.
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