_III.--The Eternal Song of Love_


That same night, accompanied by Batouch, Domini rode out into the desert
to see the rising of the moon, and there met Androvsky. He had followed
them on horseback. Domini dismissed Batouch at Androvsky's reiterated
request. When they were alone in the sands, Androvsky told Domini that
he had needed to be with her as he had something to tell her. On the
morrow he was going away from Beni-Mora.

His face, while he said this, was turned from Domini, and his voice
sounded as if it spoke to some one at a distance, some one who can hear
as man cannot hear.

Domini said little. But at the sound of his words it seemed to her as if
all outside things she had ever known had foundered; as if with them had
foundered, too, all the bodily powers that were of the essence of her
life. And the desert, which she had so loved, was no longer to her the
desert, sand with a soul in it, blue distances full of a music of
summons, but only a barren waste of dried-up matter, featureless,
desolate, ghastly with the bones of things that had died.

She rode back with Androvsky to Beni-Mora in a silence like that of
death.

But this parting, decreed by the man, was not to be. In the desert these
two human beings had grown to love each other, with a love that had
become a burning passion. And next day when, in the garden of Count
Anteoni, Androvsky came to say farewell to Domini, his love broke all
barriers. He sank on the sand, letting his hands slip down till they