She knew that was true now and, for a moment, felt almost ashamed.

“Forgive me,” she said.  “But—­it is strange, and may seem to you ridiculous or even wrong—­ever since I have been here I have felt as if everything that happened had been arranged beforehand, as if it had to happen.  And I feel that, too, about the future.”

“Count Anteoni’s fatalism!” the priest said with a touch of impatient irritation.  “I know.  It is the guiding spirit of this land.  And you too are going to be led by it.  Take care!  You have come to a land of fire, and I think you are made of fire.”

For a moment she saw a fanatical expression in his eyes.  She thought of it as the look of the monk crushed down within his soul.  He opened his lips again, as if to pour forth upon her a torrent of burning words.  But the look died away, and they parted quietly like two good friends.  Yet, as she went to the hotel, she knew that Father Roubier could not give her the kind of help she wanted, and she even fancied that perhaps no priest could.  Her heart was in a turmoil, and she seemed to be in the midst of a crowd.

Batouch was at the door, looking elaborately contrite and ready with his lie.  He had been seized with fever in the night, in token whereof he held up hands which began to shake like wind-swept leaves.  Only now had he been able to drag himself from his quilt and, still afflicted as he was, to creep to his honoured patron and crave her pardon.  Domini gave it with an abstracted carelessness that evidently hurt his pride, and was passing into the hotel when he said: 

“Irena is going to marry Hadj, Madame.”

Since the fracas at the dancing-house both the dancer and her victim had been under lock and key.

“To marry her after she tried to kill him!” said Domini.

“Yes, Madame.  He loves her as the palm tree loves the sun.  He will take her to his room, and she will wear a veil, and work for him and never go out any more.”

“What!  She will live like the Arab women?”

“Of course, Madame.  But there is a very nice terrace on the roof outside Hadj’s room, and Hadj will permit her to take the air there, in the evening or when it is hot.”

“She must love Hadj very much.”

“She does, or why should she try to kill him?”

So that was an African love—­a knife-thrust and a taking of the veil!  The thought of it added a further complication to the disorder that was in her mind.

“I will see you after dinner, Batouch,” she said.

She felt that she must do something, go somewhere that night.  She could not remain quiet.

Batouch drew himself up and threw out his broad chest.  His air gave place to importance, and, as he leaned against the white pillar of the arcade, folded his ample burnous round him, and glanced up at the sky he saw, in fancy, a five-franc piece glittering in the chariot of the moon.