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Updated: June 15, 2025
Perhaps the subtle influence of this Sahara village was beginning to steal even over her obdurate spirit. The hautboy went on crying. Its notes, though faint, were sharp and piercing. Once more the church bell chimed among the date palms, and the two musics, with their violently differing associations, clashing together smote upon Domini's heart with a sense of trouble, almost of tragedy.
The airs were always astir, helping the soft designs of Nature, loosening a leaf from its stem and bearing it to the sand, striking a berry from its place and causing it to drop at Domini's feet, giving a faded geranium petal the courage to leave its more vivid companions and resign itself to the loss of the place it could no longer fill with beauty.
In the desert these two human beings had grown to love each other, with a love that had become a burning passion. And next day when, in the garden of Count Anteoni, Androvsky came to say farewell to Domini, his love broke all barriers. He sank on the sand, letting his hands slip down till they clasped Domini's knees. "I love you!" he said. "I love you. But don't listen to me. You mustn't hear it.
"Now, since you've come, let us hurry off to Corbeil; Monsieur Domini, who is waiting for us this morning, must be mad with impatience." M. Plantat, in speaking of M. Domini's impatience, did not exaggerate the truth. That personage was furious; he could not comprehend the reason of the prolonged absence of his three fellow-workers of the previous evening.
The sky in the west looked like an enormous conflagration, in which tortured things were struggling and lifting twisted arms. Domini's acquaintance with Androvsky had not progressed as easily and pleasantly as her intercourse with Count Anteoni. She recognised that he was what is called a "difficult man."
Yet he always conveyed, too, a feeling of uneasiness. To a woman of Domini's temperament uneasiness usually implies a public or secret weakness. In Androvsky's she seemed to be aware of passion, as if it were one to dash obstacles aside, to break through doors of iron, to rush out into the open. And then what then? To tremble at the world before him? At what he had done? She did not know.
She looked weary, anaemic, and as if she wished to go to bed, and Domini's contempt for Hadj increased as she looked at her. To be afraid of a thin, tired, sleepy creature such as that was too pitiful. But Hadj did not seem to think so. He had pulled his hood still further forward, and was now merely a bundle concealed in the shade of Suzanne.
Her father, Lord Rens, had recently died, leaving Domini, who was his only child, a large fortune. His life had been a curious and a tragic one. Lady Rens, Domini's mother, had been a great beauty of the gipsy type, the daughter of a Hungarian mother and of Sir Henry Arlworth, one of the most prominent and ardent English Catholics of his day.
M. Plantat, on the contrary, seemed tolerably well satisfied, as if the death of Robelot furthered projects which he was secretly nourishing, and fulfilled his secret hopes. Besides, it little mattered if the object was to oppose M. Domini's theories and induce him to change his opinion. This corpse had more eloquence in it than the most explicit of confessions.
M. Domini's surprise increased every minute as he proceeded; while at times, exclamations of astonishment passed his lips: "Is it possible?" "That is hard to believe!" M. Lecoq finished his recital; he tranquilly munched a lozenge, and added: "What does Monsieur the Judge of Instruction think now?" M. Domini was fain to confess that he was almost satisfied.
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