“Batouch!” she called out.  “You can ride back to Beni-Mora.  We shall follow directly.”

The poet cantered forward.

“Madame, it is not safe.”

The sound of his voice made Domini suddenly know what she had not been sure of before—­that she wished to be alone with Androvsky.

“Go, Batouch!” she said.  “I tell you to go.”

Batouch turned his horse without a word, and disappeared into the darkness of the distant palms.

When they were alone together Domini and Androvsky sat silent on their horses for some minutes.  Their faces were turned towards the desert, which was now luminous beneath the moon.  Its loneliness was overpowering in the night, and made speech at first an impossibility, and even thought difficult.  At last Androvsky said: 

“Madame, why did you look at me like that just now, as if you—­as if you hesitated to remain alone with me?”

Suddenly she resolved to tell him of her oppression of the night.  She felt as if to do so would relieve her of something that was like a pain at her heart.

“Has it never occurred to you that we are strangers to each other?” she said.  “That we know nothing of each other’s lives?  What do you know of me or I of you?”

He shifted in his saddle and moved the reins from one hand to the other, but said nothing.

“Would it seem strange to you if I did hesitate—­if even now—­”

“Yes,” he interrupted violently, “it would seem strange to me.”

“Why?”

“You would rely on an Arab and not rely upon me,” he said with intense bitterness.

“I did not say so.”

“Yet at first you wished to keep Batouch.”

“Yes.”

“Then——­”

“Batouch is my attendant.”

“And I?  Perhaps I am nothing but a man whom you distrust; whom—­whom others tell you to think ill of.”

“I judge for myself.”

“But if others speak ill of me?”

“It would not influence me——­for long.”

She added the last words after a pause.  She wished to be strictly truthful, and to-night she was not sure that the words of the priest had made no impression upon her.

“For long!” he repeated.  Then he said abruptly, “The priest hates me.”

“No.”

“And Count Anteoni?”

“You interested Count Anteoni greatly.”

“Interested him!”

His voice sounded intensely suspicious in the night.

“Don’t you wish to interest anyone?  It seems to me that to be uninteresting is to live eternally alone in a sunless desert.”

“I wish—­I should like to think that I—­” He stopped, then said, with a sort of ashamed determination:  “Could I ever interest you, Madame?”

“Yes,” she answered quietly.

“But you would rather be protected by an Arab than by me.  The priest has—­”

“To-night I do not seem to be myself,” she said, interrupting him.  “Perhaps there is some physical reason.  I got up very early, and—­don’t you ever feel oppressed, suspicious, doubtful of life, people, yourself, everything, without apparent reason?  Don’t you know what it is to have nightmare without sleeping?”