Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 21, 2025
His efforts had been useless. He had prayed to be given the sympathy for this man that the true Christian ought to feel towards every human being, even the most degraded. But he felt that his prayers had not been answered. With every day his antipathy for Androvsky increased. Yet he was entirely unable to ground it upon any definite fact in Androvsky's character. He did not know that character.
The process presently became mechanical, and she was able, at the same time, to dwell upon the events that had followed upon the discovery of the murdered woman by the tent: Androvsky's pulling aside of the door of the tent to find it empty, their short ride to the encampment close by, their rousing up of the sleeping Arabs within, filthy nomads clothed in patched garments, unveiled women with wrinkled, staring faces and huge plaits of false hair and amulets.
She listened, holding Androvsky's hand, and she felt that he was listening too, with an intensity strong as her own, or stronger. Presently his hand closed upon hers more tightly, almost hurting her physically. As it did so she glanced up, but not at him, and noticed that the curtains of the palanquin were fluttering less fiercely. Once, for an instant, they were almost still.
In the dim twilight of the palanquin she saw the darkness of Androvsky's tall figure sitting in the crouched attitude rendered necessary by the peculiar seat, and swaying slightly to the movement of the camel. The light was so obscure that she could not see his eyes or clearly discern his features, but she felt that he was gazing at her shadowy figure, that his mind was passionately at work.
Androvsky's fear of both that was the link. She kept on thinking of the glance he had cast at the watch-tower, to which Trevignac had been even then approaching, although they knew it not. De Trevignac! She walked faster on the sand, to and fro before the tent. Why had he looked at the tent in which Androvsky slept with horror?
She was on the Count's right hand, with Androvsky opposite to her and Father Roubier on her left. As they took their places she and the Father said a silent grace and made the sign of the Cross, and when she glanced up after doing so she saw Androvsky's hand lifted to his forehead.
Each time he struck at the mosque and uttered his piercing cry she seemed to hear an oath spoken in a sanctuary. She longed to stop him. This one blasphemer began to destroy for her the mystic atmosphere created by the multitudes of adorers, and at last she could no longer endure his reiterated enmity. She touched Androvsky's arm. He started and looked at her. "That old man," she whispered.
She was thinking now of the broken glass on the ground at Androvsky's feet when she found him alone in the tent after De Trevignac had gone.
She thought of her dead father. The servants stole round the table, handing various dishes noiselessly. One of them, at this moment, poured red wine into Androvsky's glass. He uttered a low exclamation that sounded like the beginning of a protest hastily checked. "You prefer white wine?" said Count Anteoni. "No, thank you, Monsieur." He lifted the glass to his lips and drained it.
And she said to herself, without terror, even without regret, "I do not love, I never have loved, God." She looked into the book: "Unspeakable, indeed, is the sweetness of thy contemplation, which thou bestowest on them that love thee." The sweetness of thy contemplation! She remembered Androvsky's face looking at her out of the heart of the sun as they met for the first time in the blue country.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking