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The timbre of his voice was harsh and grating, yet it was a very interesting, even a seductive, voice, and, Domini thought, peculiarly full of vivid life, though not of energy. His manner at once banished her momentary discomfort. There is a freemasonry between people born in the same social world. By the way in which Count Anteoni took off his hat and spoke she knew at once that all was right.
The last echo of the Arab's song fainted on the blazing air. Surely it had changed now. Surely, as he turned into the shadows of the palms, he was singing, "No one but God knows what is in my heart." Yes, he was singing that. "No one but God no one but God." Count Anteoni looked down at her. She did not notice it, and he kept his eyes on her for a moment. Then he turned to the desert again.
Now, as she sat with Count Anteoni watching the noon, the half-drowsy, half-imaginative expression had gone out of her face. She looked rather rigid, rather formidable. Androvsky and Count Anteoni had never met. The Count had seen Androvsky in the distance from his garden more than once, but Androvsky had not seen him. The meeting that was about to take place was due to Domini.
Father Roubier's unconscious serenity in the midst of a luxury to which he was quite unaccustomed emphasised Androvsky's secret agitation, which was no secret to Domini, and which she knew must be obvious to Count Anteoni. She began to wish ardently that she had let Androvsky follow his impulse to go when he heard of Father Roubier's presence. They sat down.
Count Anteoni took down his arm from the white wall and pulled a branch of the purple flowers slowly towards him through the doorway. "There is peace what is generally called so, at least in Beni-Mora," he answered rather slowly and meditatively. "That is to say, there is similarity of day with day, night with night. The sun shines untiringly over the desert, and the desert always hints at peace."
For a moment she fancied that he had joined in the tiny prayer, and was about to make the sacred sign, but as she looked at him his hand fell heavily to the table. The glasses by his plate jingled. "I only remembered this morning that this is a jour maigre," said Count Anteoni as they unfolded their napkins.
Domini listened to him no more. She was praying for the living as she had never prayed before, and her prayer was the prelude not to patience but to action. It was as if her conversation with Count Anteoni had set a torch to something in her soul, something that gave out a great flame, a flame that could surely burn up the sorrow, the fear, the secret torture in her husband's soul.
He goes up and down like a sailor on the quarter-deck." "Yes, it is curious. And he is in the full blaze of the sun. That can't be an Arab." He drew a silver whistle from his waistcoat pocket, put it to his lips and sounded a call. In a moment Smain same running lightly over the sand. Count Anteoni said something to him in Arabic. He disappeared, and speedily returned with a pair of field-glasses.
She asked him that evening, and saw the red, that came as it comes in a boy's face, mount to his forehead. "Everybody who comes to Beni-Mora comes to see the garden," she said before he could reply. "Count Anteoni is half angry with you for being an exception." "But but, Madame, how can Monsieur the Count know that I am here? I have not seen him."
He sank into it heavily. "Count Anteoni here!" he said slowly. "What is he doing here?" "He is with the marabout at Beni-Hassan. And, Boris, he has become a Mohammedan." He lifted his head with a jerk and stared at her in silence. "You are surprised?" "A Mohammedan Count Anteoni?" "Yes. Do you know, when he told me I felt almost as if I had been expecting it." "But is he changed then? Is he "
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