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Updated: June 12, 2025
With each soft step the camel took they went a little farther from Beni-Mora, came a little nearer to that liberty of which Domini sometimes dreamed, to the smiling eyes and the lifted spheres of fire. She shut her eyes now. She did not want to see her husband or to touch his hand. She did not want to speak.
From the plateau they dominated the whole of the plain they had traversed as far as Beni-Mora, which on the morrow would fade into the blue horizon. Its thousands of palms made a darkness in the gold, and still the tower of the hotel was faintly visible, pointing like a needle towards the sky. The range of mountains showed their rosy flanks in the distance.
Androvsky started. "I don't ride," he said curtly. "I will teach Monsieur. I am the best teacher in Beni-Mora. In three lessons Monsieur will " "I don't ride, I tell you." Androvsky was looking angry. He stepped out into the road.
"Come, Boris," she said, and her voice held none of the passionate regret that was in her heart, "we mustn't linger, or it will be night before we reach Beni-Mora." "Let it be night," he said. "Dark night!" The horses moved slowly on, descending the hill on which stood the bordj. "Dark dark night!" he said again. She said nothing. They rode into the plain.
Suzanne handed her a large parasol lined with green, and she descended the stairs rather slowly. She was not sure whether she wanted a companion in her first walk about Beni-Mora. There would be more savour of freedom in solitude. Yet she had hardly the heart to dismiss Batouch, with all his dignity and determination.
He is always alone. Sometimes he comes here and stays for three months, and is never once seen outside the garden. And sometimes for a year he never comes to Beni-Mora. But he is here now. Twenty Arabs are always working in the garden, and at night ten Arabs with guns are always awake, some in a tent inside the door and some among the trees. "Then there is danger at night?"
For a moment, a hideous moment, she felt as if he personified Beni-Mora, as if this smile were Beni-Mora's farewell to her and to Androvsky. And Irena was dancing at Onargla, far away in the desert. She remembered the night in the dancing-house, Irena's attack upon Hadj. That love of Africa was at an end. Was not everything at an end?
"Do you remember," she went on, "in the garden what you said about that song?" "No." "You have forgotten?" "I told you," he said, "I mean to forget everything." "Everything before we came to Beni-Mora?" "And more. Everything before you put your hands against my forehead, Domini. Your touch blotted out the past." "Even the past at Beni-Mora?" "Yes, even that.
Till now the maid had never shown any capacity of imagination. Beni-Mora was certainly beginning to mould her nature into a slightly different shape.
"Madame does not care to see the dances of Beni-Mora, to hear the music, to listen to the story-teller, to enter the cafe of El Hadj where Achmed sings to the keef smokers, or to witness the beautiful religious ecstasies of the dervishes from Oumach. Therefore I come to bid Madame respectfully goodnight and to take my departure."
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