"I?"

"This afternoon in the desert, when we were in the sand looking at Beni-Mora, you began to tell me something and then you stopped. And you said, 'I can't tell you. There's too much light.' Now the sun has gone."

"Yes. But--but I want to listen to you. I want----"

She stopped. In the distance, by the great fire where the Arabs were a.s.sembled, there rose a sound of music which arrested her attention. Ali was singing, holding in his hand a brand from the fire like a torch. She had heard him sing before, and had loved the timbre of his voice, but only now did she realise when she had first heard him and who he was. It was he who, hidden from her, had sung the song of the freed negroes of Touggourt in the gardens of Count Anteoni that day when she had been angry with Androvsky and had afterwards been reconciled with him. And she knew now it was he, because, once more hidden from her--for against the curtain of darkness she only saw the flame from the torch he held and moved rhythmically to the burden of his song--he was singing it again. Androvsky, when she ceased to speak, suddenly put his arms round her, as if he were afraid of her escaping from him in her silence, and they stood thus at the tent door listening:

"The gazelle dies in the water, The fish dies in the air, And I die in the dunes of the desert sand For my love that is deep and sad."

The chorus of hidden men by the fire rose in a low murmur that was like the whisper of the desert in the night. Then the contralto voice of Ali came to Domini and Androvsky again, but very faintly, from the distance where the flaming torch was moving:

"No one but G.o.d and I Knows what is in my heart."

When the voice died away for a moment Domini whispered the refrain. Then she said:

"But is it true? Can it be true for us to-night?"

Androvsky did not reply.

"I don't think it is true," she added. "You know--don't you?"

The voice of Ali rose again, and his torch flickered on the soft wind of the night. Its movement was slow and eerie. It seemed like his voice made visible, a voice of flame in the blackness of the world. They watched it. Presently she said once more:

"You know what is in my heart--don't you?"

"Do I?" he said. "All?"

"All. My heart is full of one thing--quite full."

"Then I know."

"And," she hesitated, then added, "and yours?"

"Mine too."

"I know all that is in it then?"

She still spoke questioningly. He did not reply, but held her more closely, with a grasp that was feverish in its intensity.

"Do you remember," she went on, "in the garden what you said about that song?"

"No."

"You have forgotten?"

"I told you," he said, "I mean to forget everything."

"Everything before we came to Beni-Mora?"

"And more. Everything before you put your hands against my forehead, Domini. Your touch blotted out the past."

"Even the past at Beni-Mora?"

"Yes, even that. There are many things I did and left undone, many things I said and never said that--I have forgotten--I have forgotten for ever."

There was a sternness in his voice now, a fiery intention.

"I understand," she said. "I have forgotten them too, but not some things."

"Which?"

"Not that night when you took me out of the dancing-house, not our ride to Sidi-Zerzour, not--there are things I shall remember. When I am dying, after I am dead, I shall remember them."

The song faded away. The torch was still, then fell downwards and became one with the fire. Then Androvsky drew Domini down beside him on to the warm earth before the tent door, and held her hand in his against the earth.

"Feel it," he said. "It's our home, it's our liberty. Does it feel alive to you?"

"Yes."

"As if it had pulses, like the pulses in our hearts, and knew what we know?"

"Yes. Mother Earth--I never understood what that meant till to-night."

"We are beginning to understand together. Who can understand anything alone?"

He kept her hand always in his pressed against the desert as against a heart. They both thought of it as a heart that was full of love and protection for them, of understanding of them. Going back to their words before the song of Ali, he said:

"Love burns up evil, then love can never be evil."

"Not the act of loving."

"Or what it leads to," he said.

And again there was a sort of sternness in his voice, as if he were insisting on something, were bent on conquering some reluctance, or some voice contradicting.

"I know that you are right," he added.

She did not speak, but--why she did not know--her thought went to the wooden crucifix fastened in the canvas of the tent close by, and for a moment she felt a faint creeping sadness in her. But he pressed her hand more closely, and she was conscious only of these two warmths---of his hand above her hand and of the desert beneath it. Her whole life seemed set in a glory of fire, in a heat that was life-giving, that dominated her and evoked at the same time all of power that was in her, causing her dormant fires, physical and spiritual, to blaze up as if they were sheltered and fanned. The thought of the crucifix faded. It was as if the fire destroyed it and it became ashes--then nothing. She fixed her eyes on the distant fire of the Arabs, which was beginning to die down slowly as the night grew deeper.

"I have doubted many things," he said. "I've been afraid."

"You!" she said.

"Yes. You know it."

"How can I? Haven't I forgotten everything--since that day in the garden?"

He drew up her hand and put it against his heart.