For a moment he looked relieved, then a sudden suspicion seemed to strike him. “But without mentioning my name?” he said. “You wish to accuse me of quibbling, of insincerity, then!” she exclaimed with a heat almost equal to his own. “No, Madame, no! Madame, I--I have suffered much. I am suspicious of everybody. Forgive me, forgive me!” He spoke almost with distraction. In his manner there was something desperate. “I am sure you have suffered,” she said more gently, yet with a certain inflexibility at which she herself wondered, yet which she could not control. “You will always suffer if you cannot govern yourself. You will make people dislike you, be suspicious of you.” “Suspicious! Who is suspicious of me?” he asked sharply. “Who has any right to be suspicious of me?” She looked up and fancied that, for an instant, she saw something as ugly as terror in his eyes. “Surely you know that people don’t ask permission to be suspicious of their fellow-men?” she said. “No one here has any right to consider me or my actions,” he said, fierceness blazing out of him. “I am a free man, and can do as I will. No one has any right--no one!” Domini felt as if the words were meant for her, as if he had struck her. She was so angry that she did not trust herself to speak, and instinctively she put her hand up to her breast, as a woman might who had received a blow. She touched something small and hard that was hidden beneath her gown. It was the little wooden crucifix Androvsky had thrown into the stream at Sidi-Zerzour. As she realised that her anger died. She was humbled and ashamed. What was her religion if, at a word, she could be stirred to such a feeling of passion? “I, at least, am not suspicious of you,” she said, choosing the very words that were most difficult for her to say just then. “And Father Roubier--if you included him--is too fine-hearted to cherish unworthy suspicions of anyone.” She got up. Her voice was full of a subdued, but strong, emotion. “Oh, Monsieur Androvsky!” she said. “Do go over and see him. Make friends with him. Never mind yesterday. I want you to be friends with him, with everyone here. Let us make Beni-Mora a place of peace and good will.” Then she went across the verandah quickly to her room, and passed in, closing the window behind her.