“You are right.  Well, let us take an oasis; let us become palm gardeners like that Frenchman at Meskoutine.”

“And build ourselves an African house, white, with a terrace roof.”

“And sell our dates.  We can give employment to the Arabs.  We can choose the poorest.  We can improve their lives.  After all, if we owe a debt to anyone it is to them, to the desert.  Let us pay our debt to the desert men and live in the desert.”

“It would be an ideal life,” she said with her eyes shining on his.

“And a possible life.  Let us live it.  I could not bear to leave the desert.  Where should we go?”

“Where should we go!” she repeated.

She was still looking at him, but now the expression of her eyes had quite changed.  They had become grave, and examined him seriously with a sort of deep inquiry.  He sat upon the Arab rug, leaning his back against the wall of the traveller’s house.

“Why do you look at me like that, Domini?” he asked with a sudden stirring of something that was like uneasiness.

“I!  I was wondering what you would like, what other life would suit you.”

“Yes?” he said quickly.  “Yes?”

“It’s very strange, Boris, but I cannot connect you with anything but the desert, or see you anywhere but in the desert.  I cannot even imagine you among your vines in Tunisia.”

“They were not altogether mine,” he corrected, still with a certain excitement which he evidently endeavoured to repress.  “I—­I had the right, the duty of cultivating the land.”

“Well, however it was, you were always at work; you were responsible, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t see you even in the vineyards or the wheat-fields.  Isn’t it strange?”

She was always looking at him with the same deep and wholly unselfconscious inquiry.

“And as to London, Paris—­”

Suddenly she burst into a little laugh and her gravity vanished.

“I think you would hate them,” she said.  “And they—­they wouldn’t like you because they wouldn’t understand you.”

“Let us buy our oasis,” he said abruptly.  “Build our African house, sell our dates and remain in the desert.  I hear Batouch.  It must be time to ride on to Mogar.  Batouch!  Batouch!”

Batouch came from the courtyard of the house wiping the remains of a cous-cous from his languid lips.

“Untie the horses,” said Androvsky.

“But, Monsieur, it is still too hot to travel.  Look!  No one is stirring.  All the village is asleep.”

He waved his enormous hand, with henna-tinted nails, towards the distant town, carved surely out of one huge piece of bronze.

“Untie the horses.  There are gazelle in the plain near Mogar.  Didn’t you tell me?”

“Yes, Monsieur, but—­”

“We’ll get there early and go out after them at sunset.  Now, Domini.”

They rode away in the burning heat of the noon towards the southwest across the vast plains of grey sand, followed at a short distance by Batouch and Ali.