“To-day when—­when to me—­to me—­you are giving——­”

But before her steady gaze all the words he had meant to say, all the words of furious protest, died on his lips.

“To me—­to me—­” he repeated.

Then he was silent.

“Boris,” she said, “I want to give you one thing, the thing that you have lost.  I want to give you back peace.”

“You never can.”

“I must try.  Even if I cannot I shall know that I have tried.”

“You are giving me—­you are giving me not peace, but a sword,” he said.

She understood that he had seen the two tents.

“Sometimes a sword can give peace.”

“The peace of death.”

“Boris—­my dear one—­there are many kinds of deaths.  Try to trust me.  Leave me to act as I must act.  Let me try to be guided—­only let me try.”

He did not say another word.

That night they slept apart for the first time since their marriage.

“Domini, where are you taking me?  Where are we going?”

* * * * *

The camp was struck once more and they were riding through the desert.  Domini hesitated to answer his question.  It had been put with a sort of terror.

“I know nothing,” he continued.  “I am in your hands like a child.  It cannot be always so.  I must know, I must understand.  What is our life to be?  What is our future?  A man cannot—­”

He paused.  Then he said: 

“I feel that you have come to some resolve.  I feel it perpetually.  It is as if you were in light and I in darkness, you in knowledge and I in ignorance.  You—­you must tell me.  I have told you all now.  You must tell me.”

But she hesitated.

“Not now,” she answered.  “Not yet.”

“We are to journey on day by day like this, and I am not to know where we are going!  I cannot, Domini—­I will not.”

“Boris, I shall tell you.”

“When?”

“Will you trust me, Boris, completely?  Can you?”

“How?”

“Boris, I have prayed so much for you that at last I feel that I can act for you.  Don’t think me presumptuous.  If you could see into my heart you would see that—­indeed, I don’t think it would be possible to feel more humble than I do in regard to you.”

“Humble—­you, Domini!  You can feel humble when you think of me, when you are with me.”

“Yes.  You have suffered so terribly.  God has led you.  I feel that He has been—­oh, I don’t know how to say it quite naturally, quite as I feel it—­that He has been more intent on you than on anyone I have ever known.  I feel that His meaning in regarding to you is intense, Boris, as if He would not let you go.”

“He let me go when I left the monastery.”

“Does one never return?”

Again a sensation almost of terror assailed him.  He felt as if he were fighting in darkness something that he could not see.