He began to search the garden, furtively but minutely.  Sometimes he hesitated.  Sometimes he stood still.  Then he turned back and went a little way towards the wide sweep of sand that was bathed in sunlight where the villa stood.  Then with more determination, and walking faster, he again made his way through the shadows that slept beneath the densely-growing trees.  As he passed between them he several times stretched out trembling hands, broke off branches and threw them on the sand, treading on them heavily and crushing them down below the surface.  Once he spoke to himself in a low voice that shook as if with difficulty dominating sobs that were rising in his throat.

“De profundis—­” he said. “De profundis—­de profundis—­”

His voice died away.  He took hold of one hand with the other and went on silently.

Presently he made his way at last towards the fumoir in which Domini was still sitting, with one hand resting on the open page whose words had lit up the darkness in her spirit.  He came to it so softly that she did not hear his step.  He saw her, stood quite still under the trees, and looked at her for a long time.  As he did so his face changed till he seemed to become another man.  The ferocity of grief and anger faded from his eyes, which were filled with an expression of profound wonder, then of flickering uncertainty, then of hard, manly resolution—­a fighting expression that was full of sex and passion.  The guilty, furtive look which had been stamped upon all his features, specially upon his lips, vanished.  Suddenly he became younger in appearance.  His figure straightened itself.  His hands ceased from trembling.  He moved away from the trees, and went to the doorway of the fumoir.

Domini looked up, saw him, and got up quietly, clasping her fingers round the little book.

Androvsky stood just beyond the doorway, took off his hat, kept it in his hand, and said: 

“I came here to say good-bye.”

He made a movement as if to come into the fumoir, but she stopped it by coming at once to the opening.  She felt that she could not speak to him enclosed within walls, under a roof.  He drew back, and she came out and stood beside him on the sand.

“Did you know I should come?” he said.

She noticed that he had ceased to call her “Madame,” and also that there was in his voice a sound she had not heard in it before, a note of new self-possession that suggested a spirit concentrating itself and aware of its own strength to act.

“No,” she answered.

“Were you coming back to the hotel this morning?” he asked.

“No.”

He was silent for a moment.  Then he said slowly: 

“Then—­then you did not wish—­you did not mean to see me again before I went?”

“It was not that.  I came to the garden—­I had to come—­I had to be alone.”

“You want to be alone?” he said.  “You want to be alone?”