resently a figure came towards her, walking heavily; and all
the dates shrivelled upon the palms, and all the springs dried up.
Sorrow and terror were there beside her.

At this point in the diviner's prophecy Domini stopped him. Afterwards
she explained to Anteoni that she felt as if another's fate was being
read in it as well as her own, as if to listen any more might be to
intrude upon another's secret.

Upon the following day Anteoni left Beni-Mora to make a long desert
journey to a sacred city called Amara. Domini went to his garden at dawn
to see him off. Before departing he warned Domini to beware of
Androvsky. She asked him why. He answered that Androvsky seemed to him a
man who was at odds with life, with himself, with his Creator, a man who
was defying Allah in Allah's garden. When Anteoni had gone, Domini, in
some perplexity of spirit, and moved by a longing for sympathy and help,
visited the priest in his house near the church. The priest, indirectly,
also warned her against Androvsky, and a little later frankly, told her
that he felt an invincible dislike to him.

"I have no reason to give," said the priest. "My instinct is my reason.
I feel it my duty to say that I advise you most earnestly to break off
your acquaintance with Monsieur Androvsky."

Domini said, "It is strange; ever since I have been here I have felt as
if everything that has happened had been arranged beforehand, as if it
had to happen, and I feel that, too, about the future."

"Count Anteoni's fatalism!" exclaimed the priest. "It is the guiding
spirit of this land. And you, too, are going to be led by it. Take care!
You have come to a land of fire, and I think you are made of fire."

The warnings of Anteoni and the priest made an impression on Domini. She
was conscious of how the outside world would be likely to regard her
acquaintance with Androvsky. Suddenly she saw Androvsky as some strange
and ghastly figure of legend; as the wandering Jew met by a traveller at
cross roads, and distinguished for an instant by an oblique flash of
lightning; as the shrouded Arab of the Eastern tale, who announces
coming disaster to the wanderers in the desert by beating a death-roll
on a drum amid the sands.

And she felt upon her the heavy hand of some strange, perhaps terrible,
fate.

_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 Andr