"Boris"--she spoke the cruel words very quietly,--"we are not truly one in soul. We have never been. I know that."
He said nothing.
"Shall we ever be? Think--if one of us were to die, and the other--the one who was left--were left with the knowledge that in our love, even ours, there had always been separation--could you bear that? Could I bear it?"
"Domini--"
"Yes."
"Why do you speak like this? We are one. You have all my love. You are everything to me."
"And yet you are sad, and you try to hide your sadness, your misery, from me. Can you not give it me? I want it--more than I want anything on earth. I want it, I must have it, and I dare to ask for it because I know how deeply you love me and that you could never love another."
"I never have loved another," he said.
"I was the very first."
"The very first. When we married, although I was a man I was as you were."
She bent down her head and laid her lips on his hand that was in hers.
"Then make our union perfect, as no other union on earth has ever been. Give me your sorrow, Boris. I know what it is."
"How can--you cannot know," he said in a broken voice.
"Yes. Love is a diviner, the only true diviner. I told you once what it was, but I want you to tell me. Nothing that we take is beautiful to us, only what we are given."
"I cannot," he said.
He tried to take his hand from hers, but she held it fast. And she felt as if she were holding the wall of fire with which he surrounded the secret places of his soul.
"To-day, Boris, when I talked to Count Anteoni, I felt that I had been a coward with you. I had seen you suffer and I had not dared to draw near to your suffering. I have been afraid of you. Think of that."
"No."
"Yes, I have been afraid of you, of your reserve. When you withdrew from me I never followed you. If I had, perhaps I could have done something for you."
"Domini, do not speak like this. Our love is happy. Leave it as it is."
"I can't. I will not. Boris, Count Anteoni has found a home. But you are wandering. I can't bear that, I can't bear it. It is as if I were sitting in the house, warm, safe, and you were out in the storm. It tortures me. It almost makes me hate my own safety."
Androvsky shivered. He took his hand forcibly from Domini's.
"I have almost hated it, too," he said passionately. "I have hated it.
I'm a--I'm--"
His voice failed. He bent forward and took Domini's face between his hands.
"And yet there are times when I can bless what I have hated. I do bless it now. I--I love your safety. You--at least you are safe."
"You must share it. I will make you share it."
"You cannot."
"I can. I shall. I feel that we shall be together in soul, and perhaps to-night, perhaps even to-night."
Androvsky looked profoundly agitated. His hands dropped down.
"I must go," he said. "I must go to the priest."
He got up from the sand.
"Come to the tent, Domini."
She rose to her feet.
"When you come back," she said, "I shall be waiting for you, Boris."
He looked at her. There was in his eyes a piercing wistfulness. He opened his lips. At that moment Domini felt that he was on the point of telling her all that she longed to know. But the look faded. The lips closed. He took her in his arms and kissed her almost desperately.
"No, no," he said. "I'll keep your love--I'll keep it."
"You could never lose it."
"I might."
"Never."
"If I believed that."
"Boris!"
Suddenly burning tears rushed from her eyes.
"Don't ever say a thing like that to me again!" she said with passion.
She pointed to the grave close to them.
"If you were there," she said, "and I was living, and you had died before--before you had told me--I believe--God forgive me, but I do believe that if, when you died, I were taken to heaven I should find my hell there."
She looked through her tears at the words: "Priez pour lui."
"To pray for the dead," she whispered, as if to herself. "To pray for my dead--I could not do it--I could not. Boris, if you love me you must trust me, you must give me your sorrow."
The night drew on. Androvsky had gone to the priest. Domini was alone, sitting before the tent waiting for his return. She had told Batouch and Ouardi that she wanted nothing more, that no one was to come to the tent again that night. The young moon was rising over the city, but its light as yet was faint. It fell upon the cupolas of the Bureau Arabe, the towers of the mosque and the white sands, whose whiteness it seemed to emphasise, making them pale as the face of one terror- stricken. The city wall cast a deep shadow over the moat of sand in which, wrapped in filthy rags, lay nomads sleeping. Upon the sand- hills the camps were alive with movement. Fires blazed and smoke ascended before the tents that made patches of blackness upon the waste. Round the fires were seated groups of men devouring cous-cous and the red soup beloved of the nomad. Behind them circled the dogs with quivering nostrils. Squadrons of camels lay crouched in the sand, resting after their journeys. And everywhere, from the city and from the waste, rose distant sounds of music, thin, aerial flutings like voices of the night winds, acrid cries from the pipes, and the far-off rolling of the African drums that are the foundation of every desert symphony.
Although she was now accustomed to the music of Africa, Domini could never hear it without feeling the barbarity of the land from which it rose, the wildness of the people who made and who loved it. Always it suggested to her an infinite remoteness, as if it were music sounding at the end of the world, full of half-defined meanings, melancholy yet fierce passion, longings that, momentarily satisfied, continually renewed themselves, griefs that were hidden behind thin veils like the women of the East, but that peered out with expressive eyes, hinting their story and desiring assuagement. And tonight the meaning of the music seemed deeper than it had been before. She thought of it as an outside echo of the voices murmuring in her mind and heart, and the voices murmuring in the mind and heart of Androvsky, broken voices some of them, but some strong, fierce, tense and alive with meaning.