where the multitudes of fires gleamed.  The sensation of being far away, and close to the heart of the desert, deepened in her, but she felt now that it was a savage heart, that there was something terrible in the remoteness.  In the faint moonlight the tent cast black shadows upon the wintry whiteness of the sands, that rose and fell like waves of a smooth but foam-covered sea.  And the shadow of the sleeping-tent looked the blackest of them all.  For she began to feel as if there was another darkness about it than the darkness that it cast upon the sand.  Her husband’s face that night as he came in from the dunes had been dark with a shadow cast surely by his soul.  And she did not know what it was in his soul that sent forth the shadow.

“Boris!”

She was at the door of the sleeping-tent.  He did not answer.

“Boris!”

He came in from the farther tent that he used as a dressing-room, carrying a lit candle in his hand.  She went up to him with a movement of swift, ardent sincerity.

“You felt ill in the city?  Did Batouch let you come back alone?”

“I preferred to be alone.”

He set down the candle on the table, and moved so that the light of it did not fall upon his face.  She took his hands in hers gently.  There was no response in his hands.  They remained in hers, nervelessly.  They felt almost like dead things in her hands.  But they were not cold, but burning hot.

“You have fever!” she said.

She let one of his hands go and put one of hers to his forehead.

“Your forehead is burning, and your pulses—­how they are beating!  Like hammers!  I must—­”

“Don’t give me anything, Domini!  It would be useless.”

She was silent.  There was a sound of hopelessness in his voice that frightened her.  It was like the voice of a man rejecting remedies because he knew that he was stricken with a mortal disease.

“Why did that priest come here to-night?” he asked.

They were both standing up, but now he sat down in a chair heavily, taking his hand from hers.

“Merely to pay a visit of courtesy.”

“At night?”

He spoke suspiciously.  Again she thought of Mogar, and of how, on his return from the dunes, he had said to her, “There is a light in the tower.”  A painful sensation of being surrounded with mystery came upon her.  It was hateful to her strong and frank nature.  It was like a miasma that suffocated her soul.

“Oh, Boris,” she exclaimed bluntly, “why should he not come at night?”

“Is such a thing usual?”

“But he was visiting the tents over there—­of the nomads, and he had heard of our arrival.  He knew it was informal, but, as he said, in the desert one forgets formalities.”

“And—­and did he ask for anything?”

“Ask?”

“I saw—­on the table-coffee and—­and there was liqueur.”

“Naturally I offered him something.”