Presently, as Androvsky looked at the two tents, the monk in him seemed to die a new death, the man who had left the monastery to know a new resurrection. He was seized by a furious desire to go backward in time, to go backward but a few hours, to the moment when Domini did not know what now she knew. He cursed himself for what he had done. At last he had been able to pray. Yes, but what was prayer now, what was prayer to the man who looked at the two tents and understood what they meant? He moved away and began to walk up and down near to the two tents. He did not know where Domini was. At a little distance he saw the servants busy preparing the evening meal. Smoke rose up before the cook's tent, curling away stealthily among a group of palm trees, beneath which some Arab boys were huddled, staring with wide eyes at the unusual sight of travellers. They came from a tiny village at a short distance off, half hidden among palm gardens. The camels were feeding. A mule was rolling voluptuously in the sand. At a well a shepherd was watering his flocks, which crowded about him baaing expectantly. The air seemed to breathe out a subtle aroma of peace and of liberty. And this apparent presence of peace, this vision of the calm of others, human beings and animals, added to the torture of Androvsky. As he walked to and fro he felt as if he were being devoured by his passions, as if he were losing the last vestiges of self-control. Never in the monastery, never even in the night when he left it, had he been tormented like this. For now he had a terrible companion whom, at that time, he had not known. Memory walked with him before the tents, the memory of his body, recalling and calling for the past.
He had destroyed that past himself. But for him it might have been also the present, the future. It might have lasted for years, perhaps till death took him or Domini. Why not? He had only had to keep silence, to insist on remaining in the desert, far from the busy ways of men. They could have lived as certain others lived, who loved the free, the solitary life, in an oasis of their own, tending their gardens of palms. Life would have gone like a sunlit dream. And death?
At that thought he shuddered. Death--what would that have been to him?
What would it be now when it came? He put the thought from him with force, as a man thrusts away from him the filthy hand of a clamouring stranger assailing him in the street.
This evening he had no time to think of death. Life was enough, life with this terror which he had deliberately placed in it.
He thought of himself as a madman for having spoken to Domini. He cursed himself as a madman. For he knew, although he strove furiously not to know, how irrevocable was his act, in consequence of the great strength of her nature. He knew that though she had been to him a woman of fire she might be to him a woman of iron--even to him whom she loved.
How she had loved him!
He walked faster before the tents, to and fro.
How she had loved him! How she loved him still, at this moment after she knew what he was, what he had done to her. He had no doubt of her love as he walked there. He felt it, like a tender hand upon him. But that hand was inflexible too. In its softness there was firmness-- firmness that would never yield to any strength in him.
Those two tents told him the story of her strength. As he looked at them he was looking into her soul. And her soul was in direct conflict with his. That was what he felt. She had thought, she had made up her mind. Quietly, silently she had acted. By that action, without a word, she had spoken to him, told him a tremendous thing. And the man--the passionate man who had left the monastery--loose in him now was aflame with an impotent desire that was like a heat of fury against her, while the monk, hidden far down in him, was secretly worshipping her cleanliness of spirit.
But the man who had left the monastery was in the ascendant in him, and at last drove him to a determination that the monk secretly knew to be utterly vain. He made up his mind to enter into conflict with Domini's strength. He felt that he must, that he could not quietly, without a word, accept this sudden new life of separation symbolised for him by the two tents standing apart.
He stood still. In the distance, under the palms, he saw Batouch laughing with Ouardi. Near them Ali was reposing on a mat, moving his head from side to side, smiling with half-shut, vacant eyes, and singing a languid song.
This music maddened him.
"Batouch!" he called out sharply. "Batouch!"
Batouch stopped laughing, glanced round, then came towards him with a large pace, swinging from his hips.
"Monsieur?"
"Batouch!" Androvsky said.
But he could not go on. He could not say anything about the two tents to a servant.
"Where--where is Madame?" he said almost stammering.
"Out there, Monsieur."
With a sweeping arm the poet pointed towards a hump of sand crowned by a few palms. Domini was sitting there, surrounded by Arab children, to whom she was giving sweets out of a box. As Androvsky saw her the anger in him burnt up more fiercely. This action of Domini's, simple, natural though it was, seemed to him in his present condition cruelly heartless. He thought of her giving the order about the tents and then going calmly to play with these children, while he--while he----"You can go, Batouch," he said. "Go away."
The poet stared at him with a superb surprise, then moved slowly towards Ouardi, holding his burnous with his large hands.
Androvsky looked again at the two tents as a man looks at two enemies.