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Updated: May 20, 2025
Suddenly she saw Androvsky as some strange and ghastly figure of legend; as the wandering Jew met by a traveller at cross roads, and distinguished for an instant by an oblique flash of lightning; as the shrouded Arab of the Eastern tale, who announces coming disaster to the wanderers in the desert by beating a death-roll on a drum amid the sands.
Mustapha had disappeared within the mosque, leaving Domini and Androvsky for the moment alone in the midst of the worshippers. From the shadowy interior came forth a ceaseless sound of prayer to join the prayer without. There was a narrow stone seat by the mosque door and she sat down upon it.
Androvsky looked at him and made no reply. "To El-Largani," Domini said. "To the monastery, Madame?" He whistled to his horses gaily. As they trotted on bells chimed about their necks, chimed a merry peal to the sunshine that lay over the land. They passed soldiers marching, and heard the call of bugles, the rattle of drums. And each sound seemed distant and each moving figure far away.
Far off she saw a green darkness of palms, and above it a white tower, small, from here, as the tower of a castle of dolls. "The tower!" she said to Androvsky. "We first spoke in it. We must bid it good-bye." She made a gesture of farewell towards it. Androvsky watched the movement of her hand. She noticed now that she made no movement that he did not observe with a sort of passionate attention.
She did not put away the book, but presently she laid it down on her knees, open, and sat gazing. Androvsky had disappeared with the Arabs into some fold of the sands. The sun-ray had vanished with him. Without Androvsky and the sun she still connected them together, and knew she would for ever.
They both had a memory of a great silence, in the midst of this growing tumult in which the sky seemed now to take its part, calling with the voices of its fierce colours, with the voices of the fires that burdened it in the west. "Silence joined us, Domini," Androvsky said. "Yes. Perhaps silence is the most beautiful voice in the world."
It was like the voice that whispered to Androvsky in the cemetery of El-Largani, "Come out with me into that world, that beautiful world which God made for men. Why do you reject it?" For a moment she saw all religions, all the practices, the renunciations of the religions of the world, as varying forms of madness. She compared the self-denial of the monk with the fetish worship of the savage.
His interest in these two people, encountered by him in the desolation of the wastes, and when all his emotions had been roused by the nearness of peril, would have been deep in any case. But there was something that made it extraordinary, something connected with Androvsky. It seemed to him that he had seen, perhaps known Androvsky at some time in his life.
On the floor near him lay a quantity of fragments of glass. "Boris!" she said. "Where is Monsieur de Trevignac?" "Gone," replied Androvsky in a loud, firm voice. She looked up at him. His face was grim and powerful, hard like the face of a fighting man. "Gone already? Why?" "He's tired out. He told me to make his excuses to you." "But " She saw in the table the coffee cups.
With her two hands, which were covered with soft, loose suede gloves, she beat and brushed the dust from his coat. He stood quite still while she did it. When she had finished she said: "There, that's better." Her voice was practical. He did not move, but stood there. "I've done what I can, Monsieur Androvsky." Then he turned slowly, and she saw, with amazement, that there were tears in his eyes.
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