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Updated: June 12, 2025
On an autumn evening, Domini Enfilden leaned on the parapet of a verandah of the Hotel du Désert at Beni-Mora, in Southern Algeria, gazing towards the great Sahara, which was lit up by the glory of sunset. The bell of the Catholic Church chimed. She heard the throbbing of native drums in the village near by.
In coming to Beni-Mora she had had a sort of vague, and almost childish, feeling that she was putting the broad sea between herself and it. Yet before she had started it had been buried in the grave. She never wished to behold such truth again. She wanted to look upon some other truth of life the truth of beauty, of calm, of freedom.
No chattering voices broke the furtive silence that prevailed in this quarter of Beni-Mora. The moonlight was fainter here, obscured by the close-set buildings, and at the moment there was not an Arab in sight.
If one can, if one must? But how? Africa is as fierce and full of meaning as a furnace, you know." "Yes, I know already," she replied. His words expressed what she had already felt here in Beni-Mora, surreptitiously and yet powerfully. He said it, and last night the African hautboy had said it. Peace and a flame. Could they exist together, blended, married?
Then Androvsky moved to open the curtains, and Domini spoke for the first time since their marriage. "Wait," she said in a low voice. He dropped his hand obediently, and looked at her with inquiry in his eyes. "Don't let us look till we are far out," she said, "far away from Beni-Mora." He made no answer, but she saw that he understood all that was in her heart.
It was a room one could sit in without restlessness, and Domini liked its simplicity, its bare wooden floor and white walls. The sun made everything right here. Without the sun but she could not think of Beni-Mora without the sun. She read on the verandah and dreamed, and the hours slipped quickly away. No one came to disturb her. She heard no footsteps, no movements of humanity in the house.
"It was written" that was Domini's thought "it was written by God." Far away the church bell chimed. "Boris," Domini said quietly, "we must go to-day. We must leave Beni-Mora. You know that?" "Yes," he said, "I know." He looked out into the garden. The almost fierce resolution, that had something in it of triumph, faded from him.
When he reached the sacristy he shut himself into it alone for a moment. He sat down on a chair and, leaning his arms upon the wooden table that stood in the centre of the room, bent forward and stared before him at the wall opposite, listening to the howling of the wind. Father Roubier had an almost passionate affection for his little church of Beni-Mora.
Round the sides of the square were arcades swarming with Arabs, and under the central roof a mob of figures came and went, as flies go and come on a piece of meat flung out into a sunny place. "What a quantity of people! Do they all live in Beni-Mora?" she asked. "No, they come from all parts of the desert to sell and to buy. But most of those who sell are Mozabites."
She put her arm through Androvsky's and made his eyes follow hers across the vast spaces made magical by the sinking sun to that darkness of distant palms which, to her, would be a sacred place for ever. And as they looked in silence all that Beni-Mora meant to her came upon her. She saw again the garden hushed in the heat of noon. She saw Androvsky at her feet on the sand.
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