“The monk died suddenly?”

“Madame, he ran away from the monastery after being there in the eternal silence for twenty years, after taking the final vows.”

“How horrible!” said Domini.  “That man must be in hell now, in the hell a man can make for himself by his own act.”

As she spoke, Androvsky appeared by the tent door.  He was looking frightfully ill, and like a desperate man.  When the priest had gone, Domini told Androvsky about the liqueur and the disappearance of the Trappist monk.  As she spoke, his face grew more ghastly.  He stood rigid, as if with horror.

“Poor, poor man!” she said, as she finished her story.

“You—­you pity that man then?” murmured Androvsky.

“Yes,” she replied.  “I was thinking of the agony he must be enduring if he is still alive.”

Androvsky seemed painfully moved, and almost as if he were on the verge of some passionate outburst of emotion; and something like a deep voice far down in the loving heart of Domini said to her, “If you really love, be fearless.  Attack the sorrow which stands like a figure of death between you and your husband.  Drive it away.  You have a weapon—­faith—­ use it!”

At last she summoned all her courage, all her faith, and she forced from Androvsky the confession of what it was which held him in perpetual misery, even in freedom, even with her, whom he loved beyond and above all human beings.

“Domini,” he said, “you want to know what it is that makes me unhappy even in our love—­desperately unhappy.  It is this.  I believe in God, I love God, I have insulted God.  I have tried to forget God, to deny Him, to put human love higher than love for Him.  But always I am haunted by the thought of God, and that thought makes me despair.  Once, when I was young, I gave myself to God solemnly.  I have broken the vows I made!  I gave myself to God as a monk.”

“You are the Trappist!” she whispered.  “You are the monk from the monastery of El Largani who disappeared after twenty years?”

“Yes,” he said, “I am he.”

Standing there in the sands, while the world was wrapped in sleep, Androvsky told Domini the whole story of his life in the monastery, of his innocent happiness there, and of the events which woke up within him the mad longing to see life and the world, and to know the love of woman.  He told her of his secret departure by night from the monastery, of his journey to the desert in search of complete and savage liberty.  He told her how he had fought against his growing love for her, how he had tried to leave her; how, at the last moment in the garden by night, his passion for her had conquered him and driven him to her feet.  He told her how the officer, Trevignac, had known him long ago in the monastery, and had recognised him when the Arab brought in the liqueur which he had made.  He kept nothing from her.