opened the French
window on to the verandah. Already Beni-Mora was bathed in golden beams
and full of gentle activities. A flock of goats pattered by towards the
edge of the oasis. The Arab gardeners were lazily sweeping small leaves
from the narrow paths under the mimosa and pepper trees. Soldiers in
loose white suits, dark blue sashes and the fez, were hastening from
the Fort towards the market. A distant bugle rang out and the snarl of
camels was audible from the village. Domini stood on the verandah for
a moment, drinking in the desert air. It made her feel very pure and
clean, as if she had just bathed in clear water. She looked up at
the limpid sky, which seemed full of hope and of the power to grant
blessings, and she was glad that she had come to Beni-Mora. Her lonely
sensation of the previous night had gone. As she stood in the sun she
was conscious that she needed re-creation and that here she might find
it. The radiant sky, the warm sun and the freedom of the coming day and
of many coming desert days, filled her heart with an almost childish
sensation. She felt younger than she had felt for years, and even
foolishly innocent, like a puppy dog or a kitten. Her thick black hair,
unbound, fell in a veil round her strong, active body, and she had the
rare consciousness that behind that other more mysterious veil her soul
was to-day a less unfit companion for its mate than it had been since
her mother's sin.

Cleanliness--what a blessed condition that was, a condition to breed
bravery. In this early morning hour Beni-Mora looked magically clean.
Domini thought of the desperate dirt of London mornings, of the sooty
air brooding above black trees and greasy pavements. Surely it was
difficult to be clean of soul there. Here it would be easy. One would
tune one's lyre in accord with Nature and be as a singing palm tree
beside a water-spring. She took up a little vellum-bound book which she
had laid at night upon her dressing-table. It was _Of the Imitation of
Christ_, and she opened it at haphazard and glanced down on a sunlit
page. Her eyes fell on these words:

"Love watcheth, and sleeping, slumbereth not. When weary it is not
tired; when straitened it is not constrained; when frightened it is
not disturbed; but like a vivid flame and a burning torch it mounteth
upwards and securely passeth through all. Whosoever loveth knoweth the
cry of this voice."

The sunlight on the page of the little book was like the vivi