ivilised or not, at least live, and I have been dead all my life,
dead in life." That was horribly possible. She knew it as she felt the
enormously powerful spell of Africa descending upon her, enveloping
her quietly but irresistibly. The dream of this garden was quick with
a vague and yet fierce stirring of realities. There was a murmuring
of many small and distant voices, like the voices of innumerable tiny
things following restless activities in a deep forest. As she stood
there the last grain of European dust was lifted from Domini's soul. How
deeply it had been buried, and for how many years.

"The greatest act of man is the act of renunciation." She had just heard
those words. The eyes of the priest had flamed as he spoke them, and she
had caught the spark of his enthusiasm. But now another fire seemed lit
within her, and she found herself marvelling at such austerity. Was it
not a fanatical defiance flung into the face of the sun? She shrank from
her own thought, like one startled, and walked on softly in the green
darkness.

Larbi's flute became more distant. Again and again it repeated the same
queer little melody, changing the ornamentation at the fantasy of the
player. She looked for him among the trees but saw no one. He must be in
some very secret place. Smain touched her.

"Look!" he said, and his voice was very low.

He parted the branches of some palms with his delicate hands, and
Domini, peering between them, saw in a place of deep shadows an isolated
square room, whose white walls were almost entirely concealed by masses
of purple bougainvillea. It had a flat roof. In three of its sides were
large arched window-spaces without windows. In the fourth was a narrow
doorway without a door. Immense fig trees and palms and thickets of
bamboo towered around it and leaned above it. And it was circled by a
narrow riband of finely-raked sand.

"That is the smoking-room of Monsieur the Count," said Smain. "He spends
many hours there. Come and I will show the inside to Madame."

They turned to the left and went towards the room. The flute was close
to them now. "Larbi must be in there," Domini whispered to Smain, as a
person whispers in a church.

"No, he is among the trees beyond."

"But someone is there."

She pointed to the arched window-space nearest to them. A thin spiral of
blue-grey smoke curled through it and evaporated into the shadows of
the trees. After a moment it was followed gently and delib