“I could almost as easily believe that God could,” she said at last simply.

“Then you—­you have perfect trust in me?”

“But—­have you ever thought I had not?” she asked.  There was wonder in her voice.

“But I have given my life to you,” she added still with wonder.  “I am here in the desert with you.  What more can I give?  What more can I do?”

He put his arms about her and drew her head down on his shoulder.

“Nothing, nothing.  You have given, you have done everything—­too much, too much.  I feel myself below you, I know myself below you—­far, far down.”

“How can you say that?  I couldn’t have loved you if it were so.”  She spoke with complete conviction.

“Perhaps,” he said, in a low voice, “perhaps women never realise what their love can do.  It might—­it might—­”

“What, Boris?”

“It might do what Christ did—­go down into hell to preach to the—­to the spirits in prison.”

His voice had dropped almost to a murmur.  With one hand on her cheek he kept her face pressed down upon his shoulder so that she could not see his face.

“It might do that, Domini.”

“Boris,” she said, almost whispering too, for his words and manner filled her with a sort of awe, “I want you to tell me something.”

“What is it?”

“Are you quite happy with me here in the desert?  If you are I want you to tell me that you are.  Remember—­I shall believe you.”

“No other human being could ever give me the happiness you give me.”

“But—­”

He interrupted her.

“No other human being ever has.  Till I met you I had no conception of the happiness there is in the world for man and woman who love each other.”

“Then you are happy?”

“Don’t I seem so?”

She did not reply.  She was searching her heart for the answer—­searching it with an almost terrible sincerity.  He waited for her answer, sitting quite still.  His hand was always against her face.  After what seemed to him an eternity she said: 

“Boris!”

“Yes.”

“Why did you say that about a woman’s love being able even to go down into hell to preach to the spirits in prison?”

He did not answer.  His hand seemed to her to lie more heavily on her cheek.

“I—­I am not sure that you are quite happy with me,” she said.

She spoke like one who reverenced truth, even though it slew her.  There was a note of agony in her voice.

“Hush!” he said.  “Hush, Domini!”

They were both silent.  Beyond the canvas of the tent that shut out from them the camp they heard a sound of music.  Drums were being beaten.  The African pipe was wailing.  Then the voice of Ali rose in the song of the “Freed Negroes”: 

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

At that moment Domini felt that the words were true—­horribly true.