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She still looked apprehensive, but she had put on her hat and fastened a sprig of red geranium in the front of her black gown. The curiosity was in the ascendant. "We are not going quite alone, Mam'zelle?" "No, no. Batouch will protect us." Suzanne breathed a furtive sigh.
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.
At this moment the soft thud of horse's hoofs was audible on the road and Domini came cantering back to the hotel. Her eyes were sparkling, her face was radiant. She bowed to the priest and reined up before the hotel door, where Androvsky was standing. "I'll buy him," she said to Batouch, who swelled with satisfaction at the thought of his commission.
He wished to accompany her, and was evidently filled with treacherous ideas of supplanting his friend Batouch, but she gave him a franc and sent him away. The franc soothed him slightly, yet she could see that his childish vanity was injured. There was a malicious gleam in his long, narrow eyes as he looked after her. Yet there was genuine admiration too.
She laughed again. "I've ridden ever since I was a child." "You can buy a fine horse here for sixteen pounds," remarked Batouch, using the pronoun "tu," as is the custom of the Arabs. "Find me a good horse, a horse with spirit, and I'll buy him," Domini said. "I want to go far out in the desert, far away from everything." "You must not go alone." "Why not?" "There are bandits in the desert."
She began to speak to Count Anteoni about some absurdity of Batouch, forcing her mind into a light and frivolous mood, and he echoed her tone with a clever obedience for which secretly she blessed him. In a moment they were laughing together with apparent merriment, and Father Roubier smiled innocently at their light-heartedness, believing in it sincerely.
I shall have to know." "Yes." "Then why should I not know now? At any moment I could ask Batouch." "Batouch only knows from day to day. I have a map of the desert. I got it before we left Beni-Mora." Something perhaps a very slight hesitation in her voice just before she said the last words startled him. He turned on his horse and looked at her hard.
Far off, along the great white road, they saw two horsemen galloping to meet them from the city, one dressed in brilliant saffron yellow, the other in the palest blue, both crowned with large and snowy turbans. "Who can they be?" said Domini, as they drew near. "They look like two princes of the Sahara." Then she broke into a merry laugh. "Batouch! and Ali!" she exclaimed.
"But it is dark." "It will be day very soon. Look!" She pointed towards the east, where a light, delicate and mysterious as the distant lights in the opal, was gently pushing in the sky. "You ought not to go alone." "Unless Batouch is there I must. I have given a promise and I must keep it. There is no danger." He hesitated, looking at her with an anxious, almost a suspicious, expression.
The seller of perfumes had led her towards a dream. She was not combative, and she would be alone in the garden. As they walked towards it in the sun, through narrow ways where idle Arabs lounged with happy aimlessness, Batouch talked of Count Anteoni, the owner of the garden. Evidently the Count was the great personage of Beni-Mora.
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