Domini noticed that he spoke in a louder voice than usual, as if he were making a determined effort to throw off the uneasiness that evidently oppressed him. He ate heartily, choosing almost ostentatiously dishes in which there was meat. But everything that he did, even this eating of meat, gave her the impression that he was--subtly, how she did not know--defying not only the priest, but himself. Now and then she glanced across at him, and when she did so he was always looking away from her. After praising the wine he had relapsed into silence, and Count Anteoni--she thought moved by a very delicate sense of tact--did not directly address him again just then, but resumed the interrupted conversation about the Arabs, first explaining that the servants understood no French. He discussed them with a minute knowledge that evidently sprang from a very real affection, and presently she could not help alluding to this. “I think you love the Arabs far more than any Europeans,” she said. He fixed his bright eyes upon her, and she thought that just then they looked brighter than ever before. “Why?” he asked quietly. “Do you know the sound that comes into the voice of a lover of children when it speaks of a child?” “Ah!--the note of a deep indulgence?” “I hear it in yours whenever you speak of the Arabs.” She spoke half jestingly. For a moment he did not reply. Then he said to the priest: “You have lived long in Africa, Father. Have not you something of the same feeling towards these children of the sun?” “Yes, and I have noticed it in our dead Cardinal.” “Cardinal Lavigerie.” Androvsky bent over his plate. He seemed suddenly to withdraw his mind forcibly from this conversation in which he was taking no active part, as if he refused even to listen to it. “He is your hero, I know,” the Count said sympathetically. “He did a great deal for me.” “And for Africa. And he was wise.” “You mean in some special way?” Domini said. “Yes. He looked deep enough into the dark souls of the desert men to find out that his success with them must come chiefly through his goodness to their dark bodies. You aren’t shocked, Father?” “No, no. There is truth in that.” But the priest assented rather sadly. “Mahomet thought too much of the body,” he added. Domini saw the Count compress his lips. Then he turned to Androvsky and said: “Do you think so, Monsieur?” It was a definite, a resolute attempt to draw his guest into the conversation. Androvsky could not ignore it. He looked up reluctantly from his plate. His eyes met Domini’s, but immediately travelled away from them. “I doubt----” he said. He paused, laid his hands on the table, clasping its edge, and continued firmly, even with a sort of hard violence: “I doubt if most good men, or men who want to be good, think enough about the body, consider it enough. I have thought that. I think it still.”