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Updated: May 20, 2025
One day, in their wanderings, they came to a desolate place called Mogar, and camped on a sandhill looking over a vast stretch of dunes. Towards evening Androvsky descended into the plain to shoot gazelle, leaving Domini alone. While he was away a French officer, with two men of the Zouaves, rode slowly up.
Domini stood for a moment looking at the water listening. Then she glanced up at the moon and the solitary star. Androvsky stood by her. "Shall we let us sit on the wall, where the gap is," she said. "The water is beautiful, beautiful with that light on it, and the palms palms are always beautiful, especially at night. I shall never love any other trees as I love palm trees."
Hitherto there had never been any sort of contest between them. Their desires, like their hearts, had been in accord. Now there was not a contest, for Androvsky yielded to Domini's preference, when she expressed it, with a quickness that set his passion before her in a new and beautiful light. But she knew that, for the moment, they were not in accord.
A lamp was lit within, casting a soft light on the simple furniture and on the whiteness of the two beds, above one of which Domini imagined, though from without she could not see, the wooden crucifix Androvsky had once worn in his breast. "Shall we stay here a little?" Domini said in a low voice. "Out here?" There was a long pause. Then Androvsky answered: "Yes. Let us feel it all all.
You mustn't. But I must say it. I can't go till I say it. I love you! I love you!" "I am listening," she said. "I must hear it." Androvsky rose up, put his hands behind Domini, held her, set his lips on hers, pressing his whole body against hers. "Hear it!" he said, muttering against her lips. "Hear it! I love you! I love you!"
"Source des tourterelles," repeated Domini. "Is it beautiful, Batouch? It sounds as if it ought to be beautiful." She scarcely knew why, but she had a longing that Ain-la-Hammam might be tender, calm, a place to soothe the spirit, a place in which Androvsky might be influenced to listen to what she had to tell him without revolt, without despair.
As she drew near to the camp she saw the lamplight shining in the tent, where doubtless De Trevignac and Androvsky were smoking and talking in frank good fellowship. It was like a bright star, she thought, that gleam of light that shone out of her home, the brightest of all the stars of Africa. She went towards it.
She asked him why. He answered that Androvsky seemed to him a man who was at odds with life, with himself, with his Creator, a man who was defying Allah in Allah's garden. When Anteoni had gone, Domini, in some perplexity of spirit, and moved by a longing for sympathy and help, visited the priest in his house near the church.
At this moment Mustapha appeared, followed by the guardian of the mosque, who carried two pairs of tattered slippers. "Monsieur and Madame must take off their boots. Then I will show the mosque." Domini put on the slippers hastily, and went into the mosque without waiting to see whether Androvsky was following. And the old man's furious cry pursued her through the doorway.
This time he did not extend his hand to Androvsky, but only bowed to him, lifting his white helmet. As he went away in the sun with Bous-Bous the three he had left followed him with their eyes. For Androvsky had turned his chair sideways, as if involuntarily. "I shall learn to love Father Roubier," Domini said.
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