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Updated: June 15, 2025
He knew that to do so would be dangerous, that Domini's nature required peace in which to become absolutely normal once again after the shock it had sustained. When Domini was twenty-one he died, and her safest guide, the one who understood her best, went from her. The years passed. She lived with her embittered father; and drifted into the unthinking worldliness of the life of her order.
Batouch was to meet them at the entrance to the city, and when they had seen the marvels of its market-place was to conduct them to the tents which would be pitched on the sand-hills outside. Their horses pulled as if they, too, longed for a spell of city life after the life of the wastes, and Domini's excitement grew.
The thunder of the drums was like the thunder of a cataract in which the singers, disappearing towards the village, seemed to be swept away. The man at Domini's side raised himself up with a jerk, and all the former fierce timidity and consciousness came back to his face. He turned round, pulled open the door behind him, and took off his hat. "Excuse me, Madame," he said. "Bon soir!"
The large, knotted veins on it, the stretched sinews, were very perceptible. The hand looked violent. Domini's eyes fell on it as she turned. The impulse to speak began to fail, and when she glanced up at the man's face she no longer felt it at all. For, despite the glory of the sunset on him, there seemed to be a cold shadow in his eyes.
Madame, the landlady, had laid aside her front and said her prayer to the Virgin. Monsieur, the landlord, had muttered his last curse against the Jews and drunk his last glass of rum. They snored like honest people recruiting their strength for the morrow. In number two Suzanne Charpot, Domini's maid, was dreaming of the Rue de Rivoli.
He had renounced his determined air, and his cafe-au-lait countenance and huge body expressed enduring pathos, as of an injured, patient creature laid out for the trampling of Domini's cruel feet. "Well?" she said, sitting down by the basket table. "Well, Madame?"
When she said that word "together" that had been his thought. Now, as he looked at the two tents, a white light seemed to fall upon Domini's character, and in this white light stood the ruin and the house that was founded upon a rock. He was torn by conflicting sensations of despair and triumph. She was what he had believed. That made the triumph.
Their long, thin stems and drooping, feathery leaves were living and pathetic as the night thoughts of a woman who has suffered, but who turns, with a gesture of longing that will not be denied, to the luminance that dwells at the heart of the world. And those black palms against the gold, that stillness of darkness and light in immensity, banished Domini's faint sense of horror.
Several of the recruits came in hastily, accompanied by two Zouaves. They were wet, and looked dazed and tired out. Grasping their bags and bundles they went towards the platform. A train glided slowly in, gleaming faintly with lights. Domini's trunks were slammed down on the weighing machine, and Suzanne, drawing out her purse, took her stand before the shining hole of the ticket-office.
The other wore a more ordinary costume of white, with a white burnous and a turban spangled with gold. "Madame!" said Batouch. "Yes." "Do you see the Arab dressed in green?" He spoke in an almost awestruck voice. "Yes. Who is he?" "The great marabout who lives at Beni-Hassan." The name struck upon Domini's ear with a strange familiarity.
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