At first she persistently explored the distances, carried forcibly by an elan of her whole nature to the remotest points her eyes could reach.  Then she withdrew her gaze gradually, reluctantly, from the hidden summoning lands, whose verges she had with difficulty gained, and looked, at first with apprehension, upon the nearer regions.  But her apprehension died when she found that the desert transmutes what is close as well as what is remote, suffuses even that which the hand could almost touch with wonder, beauty, and the deepest, most strange significance.

Quite near in the river bed she saw an Arab riding towards the desert upon a prancing black horse.  He mounted a steep bit of path and came out on the flat ground at the cliff top.  Then he set his horse at a gallop, raising his bridle hand and striking his heels into the flanks of the beast.  And each of his movements, each of the movements of his horse, was profoundly interesting, and held the attention of the onlooker in a vice, as if the fates of worlds depended upon where he was carried and how soon he reached his goal.  A string of camels laden with wooden bales met him on the way, and this chance encounter seemed to Domini fraught with almost terrible possibilities.  Why?  She did not ask herself.  Again she sent her gaze further, to the black shapes moving stealthily among the little mounds, to the spirals of smoke rising into the glimmering air.  Who guarded those camels?  Who fed those distant fires?  Who watched beside them?  It seemed of vital consequence to her that she should know.

Count Anteoni took out his watch and glanced at it.

“I am looking to see if it is nearly the hour of prayer,” he said.  “When I am in Beni-Mora I usually come here then.”

“You turn to the desert as the faithful turn towards Mecca?”

“Yes.  I like to see men praying in the desert.”

He spoke indifferently, but Domini felt suddenly sure that within him there were depths of imagination, of tenderness, even perhaps of mysticism.

“An atheist in the desert is unimaginable,” he added.  “In cathedrals they may exist very likely, and even feel at home.  I have seen cathedrals in which I could believe I was one, but—­how many human beings can you see in the desert at this moment, Madame?”

Domini, still with her round chin in her hands, searched the blazing region with her eyes.  She saw three running figures with the train of camels which was now descending into the river bed.  In the shadow of the low white tower two more were huddled, motionless.  She looked away to right and left, but saw only the shallow pools, the hot and gleaming boulders, and beyond the yellow cliffs the brown huts peeping through the palms.  The horseman had disappeared.

“I can see five,” she answered.

“Ah! you are not accustomed to the desert.”

“There are more?”

“I could count up to a dozen.  Which are yours?”