The silence between them was long. In it she presently heard a
reiterated noise that sounded like struggle and pain made audible. It
was Androvsky's breathing. In the soft and exquisite air of the desert
he was gasping like a man shut up in a cellar. She looked again towards
him, startled. As she did so he turned his horse sideways and rode away
a few paces. Then he pulled up his horse. He was now merely a black
shape upon the moonlight, motionless and inaudible. She could not take
her eyes from this shape. Its blackness suggested to her the blackness
of a gulf. Her memory still heard that sound of deep-drawn breathing
or gasping, heard it and quivered beneath it as a tender-hearted person
quivers seeing a helpless creature being ill-used. She hesitated for
a moment, and then, carried away by an irresistible impulse to try to
soothe this extremity of pain which she was unable to understand, she
rode up to Androvsky. When she reached him she did not know what she had
meant to say or do. She felt suddenly impotent and intrusive, and even
horribly shy. But before she had time for speech or action he turned
to her and said, lifting up his hands with the reins in them and then
dropping them down heavily upon his horse's neck:
"Madame, I wanted to tell you that to-morrow I----" He stopped.
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