Domini said, “It is strange; ever since I have been here I have felt as if everything that has happened had been arranged beforehand, as if it had to happen, and I feel that, too, about the future.”

“Count Anteoni’s fatalism!” exclaimed the priest.  “It is the guiding spirit of this land.  And you, too, are going to be led by it.  Take care!  You have come to a land of fire, and I think you are made of fire.”

The warnings of Anteoni and the priest made an impression on Domini.  She was conscious of how the outside world would be likely to regard her acquaintance with Androvsky.  Suddenly she saw Androvsky as some strange and ghastly figure of legend; as the wandering Jew met by a traveller at cross roads, and distinguished for an instant by an oblique flash of lightning; as the shrouded Arab of the Eastern tale, who announces coming disaster to the wanderers in the desert by beating a death-roll on a drum amid the sands.

And she felt upon her the heavy hand of some strange, perhaps terrible, fate.

III.—­The Eternal Song of Love

That same night, accompanied by Batouch, Domini rode out into the desert to see the rising of the moon, and there met Androvsky.  He had followed them on horseback.  Domini dismissed Batouch at Androvsky’s reiterated request.  When they were alone in the sands, Androvsky told Domini that he had needed to be with her as he had something to tell her.  On the morrow he was going away from Beni-Mora.

His face, while he said this, was turned from Domini, and his voice sounded as if it spoke to some one at a distance, some one who can hear as man cannot hear.

Domini said little.  But at the sound of his words it seemed to her as if all outside things she had ever known had foundered; as if with them had foundered, too, all the bodily powers that were of the essence of her life.  And the desert, which she had so loved, was no longer to her the desert, sand with a soul in it, blue distances full of a music of summons, but only a barren waste of dried-up matter, featureless, desolate, ghastly with the bones of things that had died.

She rode back with Androvsky to Beni-Mora in a silence like that of death.

But this parting, decreed by the man, was not to be.  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.  You mustn’t.  But I must say it.  I can’t go till I say it.  I love you!  I love you!”

“I am listening,” she said.  “I must hear it.”

Androvsky rose up, put his hands behind Domini, held her, set his lips on hers, pressing his whole body against hers.