“Madame has returned?”

Domini smiled at him, but her lips were trembling, and she said nothing.

Smain observed her with a dawning of curiosity.

“Madame is changed,” he said at length.  “Madame looks tired.  The sun is hot in the desert now.  It is better here in the garden.”

With an effort she controlled herself.

“Yes, Smain,” she answered, “it is better here.  But I can not stay here long.”

“You are going away?”

“Yes, I am going away.”

She saw more quiet questions fluttering on his lips, and added: 

“And now I want to walk in the garden alone.”

He waved his hand towards the trees.

“It is all for Madame.  Monsieur the Count has always said so.  But Monsieur?”

“He is in Beni-Mora.  He is coming presently to fetch me.”

Then she turned away and walked slowly across the great sweep of sand towards the trees and was taken by their darkness.  She heard again the liquid bubbling of the hidden waterfall, and was again companioned by the mystery of this desert Paradise, but it no longer whispered to her of peace for her.  It murmured only its own personal peace and accentuated her own personal agony and struggle.  All that it had been it still was, but all that she had been in it was changed.  And she felt the full terror of Nature’s equanimity environing the fierce and tortured lives of men.

As she walked towards the deepest recesses of the garden along the winding tracks between the rills she had no sensation of approaching the hidden home of the Geni of the garden.  Yet she remembered acutely all her first feelings there.  Not one was forgotten.  They returned to her like spectres stealing across the sand.  They lurked like spectres among the dense masses of the trees.  She strove not to see their pale shapes, not to hear their terrible voices.  She strove to draw calm once more from this infinite calm of silently-growing things aspiring towards the sun.  But with each step she took the torment in her heart increased.  At last she came to the deeper darkness and the blanched sand, and saw pine needles strewed about her feet.  Then she stood still, instinctively listening for a sound that would complete the magic of the garden and her own despair.  She waited for it.  She even felt, strangely, that she wanted, that she needed it—­the sound of the flute of Larbi playing his amorous tune.  But his flute to-day was silent.  Had he fallen out of an old love and not yet found a new? or had he, perhaps, gone away? or was he dead?  For a long time she stood there, thinking about Larbi.  He and his flute and his love were mingled with her life in the desert.  And she felt that she could not leave the desert without bidding them farewell.

But the silence lasted and she went on and came to the fumoir.  She went into it at once and sat down.  She was going to wait for Androvsky here.