There was a sound in his deep voice that was terrible.  He was looking not at Domini, but at the priest, who stood a little aside with an expression of concern on his face.  Bous-Bous barked with excitement at the conflict.  Androvsky took the rein, and, with a sort of furious determination, sprang into the saddle and pressed his legs against the horse’s flanks.  It reared up.  The priest moved back under the palm trees, the Arab boys scattered.  Batouch sought the shelter of the arcade, and the horse, with a short, whining neigh that was like a cry of temper, bolted between the trunks of the trees, heading for the desert, and disappeared in a flash.

“He will be killed,” said the priest.

Bous-Bous barked frantically.

“It is his own fault,” said the poet.  “He told me himself just now that he did not know how to ride.”

“Why didn’t you tell me so?” Domini exclaimed.

“Madame——­”

But she was gone, following Androvsky at a slow canter lest she should frighten his horse by coming up behind it.  She came out from the shade of the palms into the sun.  The desert lay before her.  She searched it eagerly with her eyes and saw Androvsky’s horse far off in the river bed, still going at a gallop towards the south, towards that region in which she had told him on the tower she thought that peace must dwell.  It was as if he had believed her words blindly and was frantically in chase of peace.  And she pursued him through the blazing sunlight.  She was out in the desert at length, beyond the last belt of verdure, beyond the last line of palms.  The desert wind was on her cheek and in her hair.  The desert spaces stretched around her.  Under her horse’s hoofs lay the sparkling crystals on the wrinkled, sun-dried earth.  The red rocks, seamed with many shades of colour that all suggested primeval fires and the relentless action of heat, were heaped about her.  But her eyes were fixed on the far-off moving speck that was the horse carrying Androvsky madly towards the south.  The light and fire, the great airs, the sense of the chase intoxicated her.  She struck her horse with the whip.  It leaped, as if clearing an immense obstacle, came down lightly and strained forward into the shining mysteries at a furious gallop.  The black speck grew larger.  She was gaining.  The crumbling, cliff-like bank on her left showed a rent in which a faint track rose sharply to the flatness beyond.  She put her horse at it and came out among the tiny humps on which grew the halfa grass and the tamarisk bushes.  A pale sand flew up here about the horse’s feet.  Androvsky was still below her in the difficult ground where the water came in the floods.  She gained and gained till she was parallel with him and could see his bent figure, his arms clinging to the peak of his red saddle, his legs set forward almost on to his horse’s withers by the short stirrups with their metal toecaps.  The animal’s temper was nearly spent.  She could see that.  The terror had gone out of his pace.  As she looked she saw Androvsky raise his arms from the saddle peak, catch at the flying rein, draw it up, lean against the saddle back and pull with all his force.  The horse stopped dead.