“Yes.  But—­but I want to listen to you.  I want——­”

She stopped.  In the distance, by the great fire where the Arabs were assembled, there rose a sound of music which arrested her attention.  Ali was singing, holding in his hand a brand from the fire like a torch.  She had heard him sing before, and had loved the timbre of his voice, but only now did she realise when she had first heard him and who he was.  It was he who, hidden from her, had sung the song of the freed negroes of Touggourt in the gardens of Count Anteoni that day when she had been angry with Androvsky and had afterwards been reconciled with him.  And she knew now it was he, because, once more hidden from her—­for against the curtain of darkness she only saw the flame from the torch he held and moved rhythmically to the burden of his song—­he was singing it again.  Androvsky, when she ceased to speak, suddenly put his arms round her, as if he were afraid of her escaping from him in her silence, and they stood thus at the tent door listening: 

     “The gazelle dies in the water,
     The fish dies in the air,
     And I die in the dunes of the desert sand
     For my love that is deep and sad.”

The chorus of hidden men by the fire rose in a low murmur that was like the whisper of the desert in the night.  Then the contralto voice of Ali came to Domini and Androvsky again, but very faintly, from the distance where the flaming torch was moving: 

     “No one but God and I
     Knows what is in my heart.”

When the voice died away for a moment Domini whispered the refrain.  Then she said: 

“But is it true?  Can it be true for us to-night?”

Androvsky did not reply.

“I don’t think it is true,” she added.  “You know—­don’t you?”

The voice of Ali rose again, and his torch flickered on the soft wind of the night.  Its movement was slow and eerie.  It seemed like his voice made visible, a voice of flame in the blackness of the world.  They watched it.  Presently she said once more: 

“You know what is in my heart—­don’t you?”

“Do I?” he said.  “All?”

“All.  My heart is full of one thing—­quite full.”

“Then I know.”

“And,” she hesitated, then added, “and yours?”

“Mine too.”

“I know all that is in it then?”

She still spoke questioningly.  He did not reply, but held her more closely, with a grasp that was feverish in its intensity.

“Do you remember,” she went on, “in the garden what you said about that song?”

“No.”

“You have forgotten?”

“I told you,” he said, “I mean to forget everything.”

“Everything before we came to Beni-Mora?”

“And more.  Everything before you put your hands against my forehead, Domini.  Your touch blotted out the past.”

“Even the past at Beni-Mora?”

“Yes, even that.  There are many things I did and left undone, many things I said and never said that—­I have forgotten—­I have forgotten for ever.”