Androvsky shook his head.
"But you----" She hesitated. "Perhaps you aren't accustomed to horses,
and with that saddle----"
He shook his head again, drew a tremendous breath and said
"I don't care, I'll go on, I won't go back."
He put up one hand, brushed the foam from his streaming forehead, and
said again fiercely:
"I won't go back."
His face was extraordinary with its dogged, passionate expression
showing through the dust and the sweat; like the face of a man in a
fight to the death, she thought, a fight with fists. She was glad at his
last words and liked the iron sound in his voice.
"Come on then."
And they began to ride towards the dull green line of the oasis, slowly
on the sandy waste among the little round humps where the dusty cluster
of bushes grew.
"You weren't hurt by the fall?" she said. "It looked a bad one."
"I don't know whether I was. I don't care whether I was."
He spoke almost roughly.
"You asked me to ride with you," he added. "I'll ride with you."
She remembered what Batouch had said. There was pluck in this man,
pluck that surged up in the blundering awkwardness, the hesitation, the
incompetence and rudeness of him like a black rock out of the sea.
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