Androvsky did not smile.  Nor did he answer.  She felt sure that he, too, had been strongly affected by that glimpse of Sahara life.  His silence gave Batouch an opportunity of pouring forth upon them a flood of poetical description of the dancing-girls of Amara, all of whom he seemed to know as intimate friends.  Before he ceased they came into the city.

The road was still majestically broad.  They looked with interest at the first houses, one on each side of the way.  And here again they were met by the sharp contrast which was evidently to be the keynote of Amara.  The house on the left was European, built of white stone, clean, attractive, but uninteresting, with stout white pillars of plaster supporting an arcade that afforded shade from the sun, windows with green blinds, and an open doorway showing a little hall, on the floor of which lay a smart rug glowing with gay colours; that on the right, before which the sand lay deep as if drifted there by some recent wind of the waste, was African and barbarous, an immense and rambling building of brown earth, brushwood and palm, windowless, with a flat-terraced roof, upon which were piled many strange-looking objects like things collapsed, red and dark green, with fringes and rosettes, and tall sticks of palm pointing vaguely to the sky.

“Why, these are like our palanquin!” Domini said.

“They are the palanquins of the dancing-girls, Madame,” said Batouch.  “That is the cafe of the dancers, and that”—­he pointed to the neat house opposite—­“is the house of Monsieur the Aumonier of Amara.”

“Aumonier,” said Androvsky, sharply.  “Here!”

He paused, then added more quietly: 

“What should he do here?”

“But, Monsieur, he is for the French officers.”

“There are French officers?”

“Yes, Monsieur, four or five, and the commandant.  They live in the palace with the cupolas.”

“I forgot,” Androvsky said to Domini.  “We are not out of the sphere of French influence.  This place looks so remote and so barbarous that I imagined it given over entirely to the desert men.”

“We need not see the French,” she said.  “We shall be encamped outside in the sand.”

“And we need not stay here long,” he said quickly.

“Boris,” she asked him, half in jest, half in earnest, “shall we buy a desert island to live in?”

“Let us buy an oasis,” he said.  “That would be the perf—­the safest life for us.”

“The safest?”

“The safest for our happiness.  Domini, I have a horror of the world!” He said the last words with a strong, almost fierce, emphasis.

“Had you it always, or only since we have been married?”

“I—­perhaps it was born in me, perhaps it is part of me.  Who knows?”

He had relapsed into a gravity that was heavy with gloom, and looked about him with eyes that seemed to wish to reject all that offered itself to their sight.