“What’s that, Ouardi?” she asked, touching the bottle.

He told her it was an African liqueur.

“Take it in,” she said.

And she strolled away to the bonfire to listen to the fantasia the Arabs were making in honour of the soldiers.

When she returned to the tent, she found her husband alone in it, standing up, with a quantity of fragments of glass lying at his feet.  Near him was the coffee, untasted.  Trevignac was gone.  She asked for an explanation.  He gave her none.  The fragments of glass were all that remained of the bottle which had contained the liqueur.

At dawn Domini met Trevignac riding away with his soldiers.  He saluted her, bidding his men ride on.  As he gazed at her, she seemed to see horror in his eyes.  Twice he tried to speak, but apparently could not bring himself to do so.  He looked towards the tent where Androvsky was sleeping, then at Domini; then, as if moved by an irresistible impulse, he leaned from his saddle, made over Domini the sign of the cross, and rode away into the desert.

V.—­I Have Insulted God

From that day Androvsky’s strange misery of the soul, strange horror of the world, increased.  Domini felt that he was secretly tormented.  She tried to make him happier; she even told him that she believed he often felt far away from God, and that she prayed each day for him.

“Boris,” she said, “if it’s that, don’t be too sad.  It may all come right in the desert.  For the desert is the garden of Allah.”

He made her no answer.

At last in their journeying they came to the sacred city of Amara, and camped in the white sands beyond it.

This was the place described by the sand-diviner, and here Domini knew that her love was to be crowned, that she would become a mother.  She hesitated to tell her husband, for in this place his misery and fear of men seemed mounting to a climax.  Nevertheless, as if in a frantic attempt to get the better of his mental torture, he had gone off, saying he wanted to see the city.

While he was away, Domini was visited first by Count Anteoni, who told her that he had joined the Mohammedan religion, and was at last happy and at peace; secondly, when night had fallen, by the priest of Amara.  This man was talkative and genial, fond of the good things of life.  Domini offered him a cigar.  He accepted it.  An Arab brought coffee, and the same African liqueur which had been taken to the tent on the night when Trevignac had dined with Domini and Androvsky.

When the priest was about to drink some of it, he suddenly paused, and put the glass down.  Domini leant forward.

“Louarine,” she said, reading the name on the bottle.  “Won’t you have some?”

“The fact is, madame,” began the priest, with hesitation, “this liqueur comes from the Trappist monastery of El Largani.”

“Yes?”

“It was made by a monk and priest to whom the secret of its manufacture belonged.  At his death he was to confide the secret to another whom he had chosen.  But the monks of El Largani will never earn another franc by Louarine when what they have in stock is exhausted.”