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Updated: June 7, 2025
She could not even pray without words. Yet, in that moment, she did not feel alone. In the garden of Count Anteoni, which has now passed into other hands, a little boy may often be seen playing.
"Ah!" she said on an indrawn breath. As she spoke the thin, nasal cry of a distant voice broke upon her ears, prolonging a strange call. "The Mueddin," said Count Anteoni. And he repeated in a low tone the words of the angel to the prophet: "Oh thou that art covered arise . . . and magnify thy Lord; and purify thy clothes, and depart from uncleanness."
He disappeared behind a projection of earth where the path sank to the river bed. Domini laid the glasses down on the wall and looked at Count Anteoni. "You say an atheist in the desert is unimaginable? "Isn't it true?" "Has an atheist a hatred, a horror of prayer?" "Chi lo sa? The devil shrank away from the lifted Cross." "Because he knew how much that was true it symbolised."
It was he who, hidden from her, had sung the song of the freed negroes of Touggourt in the gardens of Count Anteoni that day when she had been angry with Androvsky and had afterwards been reconciled with him.
But her interview with Count Anteoni, and the sound of this voice praying, praying for the dead men in the sand, stirred her to an almost fierce resolution. She had given herself to Androvsky. He had given himself to her. They were one. She had a right to draw near to his pain, if by so doing there was a chance that she might bring balm to it.
She joined him, concealing her reluctance to leave Androvsky with the priest, and walked beside him down the path, preceded by Bous-Bous. "Is my fete going to be a failure?" he murmured. She did not reply. Her heart was full of vexation, almost of bitterness. She felt angry with Count Anteoni, with Androvsky, with herself. She almost felt angry with poor Father Roubier.
His face was grave, even sad, though when he saw her waiting for him he smiled. "You have been all this time with the priest?" she said. "Nearly all. I walked for a little while in the city. And you?" "I rode out and met a friend." "A friend?" he said, as if startled. "Yes, from Beni-Mora Count Anteoni. He has been here to pay me a visit." She pulled forward a basket-chair for him.
It made her position difficult, speech hard for her. She felt that she wanted something, yet scarcely knew what, or exactly why she had come. "I have been saying good-bye to Count Anteoni," she resumed. "He has gone on a desert journey." "For long?" "I don't know, but I feel that it will be." "He comes and goes very suddenly. Often he is here and I do not even know it."
In the dawn the desert was the home of the breeze, of gentle sunbeams and of liberty. Presently she heard the noise of horses cantering near at hand, and Count Anteoni, followed by two Arab attendants, came round the bend of the wall and drew up beneath her. He rode on a high red Arab saddle, and a richly-ornamented gun was slung in an embroidered case behind him on the right-hand side.
Domini lowered her parasol to conceal her face. In the distance she could still hear the song, but it was dying away. "Oh! what is going to happen to me here?" she thought. Count Anteoni was looking away from her now across the desert. A strange impulse rose up in her. She could not resist it.
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