"Where we first met?"

"Yes."

"What for?"

"For us, if you choose."

"Tell me about him. I have seen him twice. He followed me with a bag of sand."

"He is a desert man. I don't know his tribe, but before he settled here he was a nomad, one of the wanderers who dwell in tents, a man of the sand; as much of the sand as a viper or a scorpion. One would suppose such beings were bred by the marriage of the sand-grains. The sand tells him secrets."

"He says. Do you believe it?"

"Would you like to test it?"

"How?"

"By coming with me to the _fumoir_?"

She hesitated obviously.

"Mind," he added, "I do not press it. A word from me and he is gone.

But you are fearless, and you have spoken already, will speak much more intimately in the future, with the desert spirits."

"How do you know that?"

"The 'much more intimately'?"

"Yes."

"I do not know it, but--which is much more--I feel it."

She was silent, looking towards the trees where the Diviner had disappeared. Count Anteoni's boyish merriment had faded away. He looked grave, almost sad.

"I am not afraid," she said at last. "No, but--I will confess it--there is something horrible about that man to me. I felt it the first time I saw him. His eyes are too intelligent. They look diseased with intelligence."

"Let me send him away. Smain!"

But she stopped him. Directly he made the suggestion she felt that she must know more of this man.

"No. Let us go to the _fumoir_."

"Very well. Go, Smain!"

Smain went into the little tent by the gate, sat down on his haunches and began to smell at a sprig of orange blossoms. Domini and the Count walked into the darkness of the trees.

"What is his name?" she asked.

"Aloui."

"Aloui."

She repeated the word slowly. There was a reluctant and yet fascinated sound in her voice.

"There is melody in the name," he said.

"Yes. Has he--has he ever looked in the sand for you?"

"Once--a long time ago."

"May I--dare I ask if he found truth there?"

"He found nothing for all the years that have pa.s.sed since then."

"Nothing!"

There was a sound of relief in her voice.

"For those years."

She glanced at him and saw that once again his face had lit up into ardour.

"He found what is still to come?" she said.

And he repeated:

"He found what is still to come."

Then they walked on in silence till they saw the purple blossoms of the bougainvillea clinging to the white walls of the _fumoir_. Domini stopped on the narrow path.

"Is he in there?" she asked almost in a whisper.

"No doubt."

"Larbi was playing the first day I came here."

"Yes."

"I wish he was playing now."

The silence seemed to her unnaturally intense.

"Even his love must have repose."

She went on a step or two till, but still from a distance, she could look over the low plaster wall beneath the nearest window s.p.a.ce into the little room.

"Yes, there he is," she whispered.

The Diviner was crouching on the floor with his back towards them and his head bent down. Only his shoulders could be seen, covered with a white gandoura. They moved perpetually but slightly.