She did not answer. They rode on, always slowly. His horse, having had its will, and having known his strength at the end of his incompetence, went quietly, though always with that feathery, light, tripping action peculiar to purebred Arabs, an action that suggests the treading of a spring board rather than of the solid earth. And Androvsky seemed a little more at home on it, although he sat awkwardly on the chair-like saddle, and grasped the rein too much as the drowning man seizes the straw. Domini rode without looking at him, lest he might think she was criticising his performance. When he had rolled in the dust she had been conscious of a sharp sensation of contempt. The men she had been accustomed to meet all her life rode, shot, played games as a matter of course. She was herself an athlete, and, like nearly all athletic women, inclined to be pitiless towards any man who was not so strong and so agile as herself. But this man had killed her contempt at once by his desperate determination not to be beaten. She knew by the look she had just seen in his eyes that if to ride with her that day meant death to him he would have done it nevertheless.
The womanhood in her liked the tribute, almost more than liked it.
"Your horse goes better now," she said at last to break the silence.
"Does it?" he said.
"You don't know!"
"Madame, I know nothing of horses or riding. I have not been on a horse for twenty-three years."
She was amazed.
"We ought to go back then," she exclaimed.
"Why? Other men ride--I will ride. I do it badly. Forgive me."
"Forgive you!" she said. "I admire your pluck. But why have you never ridden all these years?"
After a pause he answered:
"I--I did not--I had not the opportunity."
His voice was suddenly constrained. She did not pursue the subject, but stroked her horse's neck and turned her eyes towards the dark green line on the horizon. Now that she was really out in the desert she felt almost bewildered by it, and as if she understood it far less than when she looked at it from Count Anteoni's garden. The thousands upon thousands of sand humps, each crowned with its dusty dwarf bush, each one precisely like the others, agitated her as if she were confronted by a vast multitude of people. She wanted some point which would keep the eyes from travelling but could not find it, and was mentally restless as the swimmer far out at sea who is pursued by wave on wave, and who sees beyond him the unceasing foam of those that are pressing to the horizon. Whither was she riding? Could one have a goal in this immense expanse? She felt an overpowering need to find one, and looked once more at the green line.
"Do you think we could go as far as that?" she asked Androvsky, pointing with her whip.
"Yes, Madame."
"It must be an oasis. Don't you think so?"
"Yes. I can go faster."
"Keep your rein loose. Don't pull his mouth. You don't mind my telling you. I've been with horses all my life."
"Thank you," he answered.
"And keep your heels more out. That's much better. I'm sure you could teach me a thousand things; it will be kind of you to let me teach you this."
He cast a strange look at her. There was gratitude in it, but much more; a fiery bitterness and something childlike and helpless.
"I have nothing to teach," he said.
Their horses broke into a canter, and with the swifter movement Domini felt more calm. There was an odd lightness in her brain, as if her thoughts were being shaken out of it like feathers out of a bag. The power of concentration was leaving her, and a sensation of carelessness--surely gipsy-like--came over her. Her body, dipped in the dry and thin air as in a clear, cool bath, did not suffer from the burning rays of the sun, but felt radiant yet half lazy too. They went on and on in silence as intimate friends might ride together, isolated from the world and content in each other's company, content enough to have no need of talking. Not once did it strike Domini as strange that she should go far out into the desert with a man of whom she knew nothing, but in whom she had noticed disquieting peculiarities. She was naturally fearless, but that had little to do with her conduct.
Without saying so to herself she felt she could trust this man.
The dark green line showed clearer through the sunshine across the gleaming flats. It was possible now to see slight irregularities in it, as in a blurred dash of paint flung across a canvas by an uncertain hand, but impossible to distinguish palm trees. The air sparkled as if full of a tiny dust of intensely brilliant jewels, and near the ground there seemed to quiver a maze of dancing specks of light. Everywhere there was solitude, yet everywhere there was surely a ceaseless movement of minute and vital things, scarce visible sun fairies eternally at play.
And Domini's careless feeling grew. She had never before experienced so delicious a recklessness. Head and heart were light, reckless of thought or love. Sad things had no meaning here and grave things no place. For the blood was full of sunbeams dancing to a lilt of Apollo.
Nothing mattered here. Even Death wore a robe of gold and went with an airy step. Ah, yes, from this region of quivering light and heat the Arabs drew their easy and lustrous resignation. Out here one was in the hands of a God who surely sang as He created and had not created fear.
Many minutes passed, but Domini was careless of time as of all else.
The green line broke into feathery tufts, broadened into a still far- off dimness of palms.
"Water!"
Androvsky's voice spoke as if startled. Domini pulled up. Their horses stood side by side, and at once, with the cessation of motion, the mysticism of the desert came upon them and the marvel of its silence, and they seemed to be set there in a wonderful dream, themselves and their horses dreamlike.
"Water!" he said again.
