When she had laughed Domini said:
"On the contrary, Monsieur, you have turned my thoughts into a happier current by your coming."
"How so?"
"You made me think of what are called the little things of life that are more to us women than to you men, I suppose."
"Ah," he said. "This food, this wine, this chair with a cushion, this gay light--Madame, they are not little things I have to be grateful for. When I think of the dunes they seem to me--they seem--"
Suddenly he stopped. His gay voice was choked. She saw that there were tears in his blue eyes, which were fixed on her with an expression of ardent gratitude. He cleared his throat.
"Monsieur," he said to Androvsky, "you will not think me presuming on an acquaintance formed in the desert if I say that till the end of my life I--and my men--can only think of Madame as of the good Goddess of the desolate Sahara!"
He did not know how Androvsky would take this remark, he did not care.
For the moment in his impulsive nature there was room only for admiration of the woman and, gratitude for her frank kindness.
Androvsky said:
"Thank you, Monsieur."
He spoke with an intensity, even a fervour, that were startling. For the first time since they had been together his voice was absolutely natural, his manner was absolutely unconstrained, he showed himself as he was, a man on fire with love for the woman who had given herself to him, and who received a warm word of praise of her as a gift made to himself. De Trevignac no longer wondered that Domini was his wife.
Those three words, and the way they were spoken, gave him the man and what he might be in a woman's life. Domini looked at her husband silently. It seemed to her as if her heart were flooded with light, as if desolate Mogar were the Garden of Eden before the angel came. When they spoke again it was on some indifferent topic. But from that moment the meal went more merrily. Androvsky seemed to lose his strange uneasiness. De Trevignac met him more than half-way. Something of the gaiety round the camp fire had entered into the tent. A chain of sympathy had been forged between these three people. Possibly, a touch might break it, but for the moment it seemed strong.
At the end of the dinner Domini got up.
"We have no formalities in the desert," she said. "But I'm going to leave you together for a moment. Give Monsieur de Trevignac a cigar, Boris. Coffee is coming directly."
She went out towards the camp fire. She wanted to leave the men together to seal their good fellowship. Her husband's change from taciturnity to cordiality had enchanted her. Happiness was dancing within her. She felt gay as a child. Between the fire and the tent she met Ouardi carrying a tray. On it were a coffee-pot, cups, little glasses and a tall bottle of a peculiar shape with a very thin neck and bulging sides.
"What's that, Ouardi?" she asked, touching it with her finger.
"That is an African liqueur, Madame, that you have never tasted.
Batouch told me to bring it in honour of Monsieur the officer. They call it--"
"Another surprise of Batouch's!" she interrupted gaily. "Take it in!
Monsieur the officer will think we have quite a cellar in the desert."
He went on, and she stood for a few minutes looking at the blaze of the fire, and at the faces lit up by it, French and Arab. The happy soldiers were singing a French song with a chorus for the delectation of the Arabs, who swayed to and fro, wagging their heads and smiling in an effort to show appreciation of the barbarous music of the Roumis. Dreary, terrible Mogar and its influences were being defied by the wanderers halting in it. She thought of Androvsky's words about the human will overcoming the influence of place, and a sudden desire came to her to go as far as the tower where she had felt sad and apprehensive, to stand in its shadow for an instant and to revel in her happiness.
She yielded to the impulse, walked to the tower, and stood there facing the darkness which hid the dunes, the white plains, the phantom sea, seeing them in her mind, and radiantly defying them. Then she began to return to the camp, walking lightly, as happy people walk.
When she had gone a very short way she heard someone coming towards her. It was too dark to see who it was. She could only hear the steps among the stones. They were hasty. They passed her and stopped behind her at the tower. She wondered who it was, and supposed it must be one of the soldiers come to fetch something, or perhaps tired and hastening to bed.
As she drew near to the camp she saw the lamplight shining in the tent, where doubtless De Trevignac and Androvsky were smoking and talking in frank good fellowship. It was like a bright star, she thought, that gleam of light that shone out of her home, the brightest of all the stars of Africa. She went towards it. As she drew near she expected to hear the voices of the two men, but she heard nothing. Nor did she see the blackness of their forms in the circle of the light.
Perhaps they had gone out to join the soldiers and the Arabs round the fire. She hastened on, came to the tent, entered it, and was confronted by her husband, who was standing back in an angle formed by the canvas, in the shadow, alone. On the floor near him lay a quantity of fragments of glass.
"Boris!" she said. "Where is Monsieur de Trevignac?"
"Gone," replied Androvsky in a loud, firm voice.
She looked up at him. His face was grim and powerful, hard like the face of a fighting man.
"Gone already? Why?"
"He's tired out. He told me to make his excuses to you."
"But----"
She saw in the table the coffee cups. Two of them were full of coffee.
The third, hers, was clean.
"But he hasn't drunk his coffee!" she said.
She was astonished and showed it. She could not understand a man who had displayed such warm, even touching, appreciation of her kindness leaving her without a word, taking the opportunity of her momentary absence to disappear, to shirk away--for she put it like that to herself.
"No--he did not want coffee."
"But was anything the matter?"
