“I can hear now,” whispered the Count.

“What is he saying?”

“He is speaking about the desert.”

“Yes?”

“He sees a great storm.  Wait a moment!”

The voice spoke for some seconds and ceased, and once again the Diviner remained absolutely motionless, with his hands extended above the grains like carven things.

“He sees a great sand-storm, one of the most terrible that has ever burst over the Sahara.  Everything is blotted out.  The desert vanishes.  Beni-Mora is hidden.  It is day, yet there is a darkness like night.  In this darkness he sees a train of camels waiting by a church.”

“A mosque?”

“No, a church.  In the church there is a sound of music.  The roar of the wind, the roar of the camels, mingles with the chanting and drowns it.  He cannot hear it any more.  It is as if the desert is angry and wishes to kill the music.  In the church your life is beginning.”

“My life?”

“Your real life.  He says that now you are fully born, that till now there has been a veil around your soul like the veil of the womb around a child.”

“He says that!”

There was a sound of deep emotion in her voice.

“That is all.  The roar of the wind from the desert has silenced the music in the church, and all is dark.”

The Diviner moved again, and formed fresh patterns in the sand with feverish rapidity, and again began to speak swiftly.

“He sees the train of camels that waited by the church starting on a desert journey.  The storm has not abated.  They pass through the oasis into the desert.  He sees them going towards the south.”

Domini leaned forward on the divan, looking at Count Anteoni above the bent body of the Diviner.

“By what route?” she whispered.

“By the route which the natives call the road to Tombouctou.”

“But—­it is my journey!”

“Upon one of the camels, in a palanquin such as the great sheikhs use to carry their women, there are two people, protected against the storm by curtains.  They are silent, listening to the roaring of the wind.  One of them is you.”

“Two people!”

“Two people.”

“But—­who is the other?”

“He cannot see.  It is as if the blackness of the storm were deeper round about the other and hid the other from him.  The caravan passes on and is lost in the desolation and the storm.”

She said nothing, but looked down at the thin body of the Diviner crouched close to her knees.  Was this pock-marked face the face of a prophet?  Did this skin and bone envelop the soul of a seer?  She no longer wished that Larbi was playing upon his flute or felt the silence to be unnatural.  For this man had filled it with the roar of the desert wind.  And in the wind there struggled and was finally lost the sound of voices of her Faith chanting—­what?  The wind was too strong.  The voices were too faint.  She could not hear.