“If people would use their wills they need not be influenced by place, they need not be governed by a thousand things, by memories, by fears, by fancies--yes, even by fancies that are the merest shadows, but out of which they make phantoms. Half the terrors and miseries of life lie only in the minds of men. They even cause the very tragedies they would avoid by expecting them.” He said the last words with a sort of strong contempt--then, more quietly, he added: “You, Domini, why should you feel the uncertainty of life, especially at Mogar? You need not. You can choose not to. Life is the same in its chances here as everywhere?” “But you,” she answered--“did you not feel a tragic influence when we arrived here? Do you remember how you looked at the tower?” “The tower!” he said, with a quick glance at De Trevignac. “I--why should I look at the tower?” “I don’t know, but you did, almost as if you were afraid of it.” “My tower!” said De Trevignac. Another roar of laughter reached them from the camp fire. It made Domini smile in sympathy, but De Trevignac and Androvsky looked at each other for a moment, the one with a sort of earnest inquiry, the other with hostility, or what seemed hostility, across the circle of lamplight that lay between them. “A tower rising in the desert emphasises the desolation. I suppose that was it,” Androvsky said, as the laugh died down into Batouch’s throaty chuckle. “It suggests lonely people watching.” “For something that never comes, or something terrible that comes,” De Trevignac said. As he spoke the last words Androvsky moved uneasily in his chair, and looked out towards the camp, as if he longed to get up and go into the open air, as if the tent roof above his head oppressed him. Trevignac turned to Domini. “In this case, Madame, you were the lonely watcher, and I was the something terrible that came.” She laughed. While she laughed De Trevignac noticed that Androvsky looked at her with a sort of sad intentness, not reproachful or wondering, as an older person might look at a child playing at the edge of some great gulf into which a false step would precipitate it. He strove to interpret this strange look, so obviously born in the face of his host in connection with himself. It seemed to him that he must have met Androvsky, and that Androvsky knew it, knew--what he did not yet know--where it was and when. It seemed to him, too, that Androvsky thought of him as the “something terrible” that had come to this woman who sat between them out of the desert. But how could it be?