Androvsky stood there without a word.

“Now, do you care to come if I don’t find Batouch?  Mind, I’m not the least afraid.”

“Perhaps he is there—­if you told him.”  He muttered the words.  His whole manner had changed.  Now he looked more than suspicious—­cloudy and fierce.

“Possibly.”

She began to descend the stairs.  He did not follow her, but stood looking after her.  When she reached the arcade it was deserted.  Batouch had forgotten or had overslept himself.  She could have walked on under the roof that was the floor of the verandah, but instead she stepped out into the road.  Androvsky was above her by the parapet.  She glanced up and said: 

“He is not here, but it is of no consequence.  Dawn is breaking. Au revoir!”

Slowly he took off his hat.  As she went away down the road he was holding it in his hand, looking after her.

“He does not like the Count,” she thought.

At the corner she turned into the street where the sand-diviner had his bazaar, and as she neared his door she was aware of a certain trepidation.  She did not want to see those piercing eyes looking at her in the semi-darkness, and she hurried her steps.  But her anxiety was needless.  All the doors were shut, all the inhabitants doubtless wrapped in sleep.  Yet, when she had gained the end of the street, she looked back, half expecting to see an apparition of a thin figure, a tortured face, to hear a voice, like a goblin’s voice, calling after her.  Midway down the street there was a man coming slowly behind her.  For a moment she thought it was the Diviner in pursuit, but something in the gait soon showed her her mistake.  There was a heaviness in the movement of this man quite unlike the lithe and serpentine agility of Aloui.  Although she could not see the face, or even distinguish the costume in the morning twilight, she knew it for Androvsky.  From a distance he was watching over her.  She did not hesitate, but walked on quickly again.  She did not wish him to know that she had seen him.  When she came to the long road that skirted the desert she met the breeze of dawn that blows out of the east across the flats, and drank in its celestial purity.  Between the palms, far away towards Sidi-Zerzour, above the long indigo line of the Sahara, there rose a curve of deep red gold.  The sun was coming up to take possession of his waiting world.  She longed to ride out to meet him, to give him a passionate welcome in the sand, and the opening words of the Egyptian “Adoration of the Sun by the Perfect Souls” came to her lips: 

“Hommage a Toi.  Dieu Soleil.  Seigneur du Ciel, Roi sur la Terre!  Lion du Soir!  Grande Ame divine, vivante a toujours.”

Why had she not ordered her horse to ride a little way with Count Anteoni?  She might have pretended that she was starting on her great journey.

The red gold curve became a semi-circle of burnished glory resting upon the deep blue, then a full circle that detached itself majestically and mounted calmly up the cloudless sky.  A stream of light poured into the oasis, and Domini, who had paused for a moment in silent worship, went on swiftly through the negro village which was all astir, and down the track to the white villa.