At last he said:
"May I ask, Monsieur, if you are a Russian?"
"My father was. But I have never set foot in Russia."
"The soul that I find in the art, music, literature of your country is,
to me, the most interesting soul in Europe," the Count said with a ring
of deep earnestness in his grating voice.
Spoken as he spoke it, no compliment could have been more gracious, even
moving. But Androvsky only replied abruptly:
"I'm afraid I know nothing of all that."
Domini felt hot with a sort of shame, as at a close friend's public
display of ignorance. She began to speak to the Count of Russian music,
books, with an enthusiasm that was sincere. For she, too, had found in
the soul from the Steppes a meaning and a magic that had taken her soul
prisoner. And suddenly, while she talked, she thought of the Desert
as the burning brother of the frigid Steppes. Was it the wonder of the
eternal flats that had spoken to her inmost heart sometimes in London
concert-rooms, in her room at night when she read, forgetting time,
which spoke to her now more fiercely under the palms of Africa? At the
thought something mystic seemed to stand in her enthusiasm.
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