man who had fled from prayer in the "Garden
of Allah." As she glanced at the empty chair standing before the knives
and forks, and the white cloth, she was uncertain whether she wished it
to be filled by the traveller or not. She felt his presence in Beni-Mora
as a warring element. That she knew. She knew also that she had come
there to find peace, a great calm and remoteness in which she could at
last grow, develop, loose her true self from cramping bondage, come
to an understanding with herself, face her heart and soul, and--as it
were--look them in the eyes and know them for what they were, good
or evil. In the presence of this total stranger there was something
unpleasantly distracting which she could not and did not ignore,
something which roused her antagonism and which at the same time
compelled her attention. She had been conscious of it in the train,
conscious of it in the tunnel at twilight, at night in the hotel, and
once again in Count Anteoni's garden. This man intruded himself, no
doubt unconsciously, or even against his will, into her sight, her
thoughts, each time that she was on the point of giving herself to what
Count Anteoni called "the desert spirits." So it had been when the train
ran out of the tunnel into the blue country. So it had been again when
she leaned on the white wall and gazed out over the shining fastnesses
of the sun. He was there like an enemy, like something determined,
egoistical, that said to her, "You would look at the greatness of the
desert, at immensity, infinity, God!--Look at me." And she could
not turn her eyes away. Each time the man had, as if without effort,
conquered the great competing power, fastened her thoughts upon himself,
set her imagination working about his life, even made her heart beat
faster with some thrill of--what? Was it pity? Was it a faint horror?
She knew that to call the feeling merely repugnance would not be
sincere. The intensity, the vitality of the force shut up in a human
being almost angered her at this moment as she looked at the empty chair
and realised all that it had suddenly set at work. There was something
insolent in humanity as well as something divine, and just then she
felt the insolence more than the divinity. Terrifically greater, more
overpowering than man, the desert was yet also somehow less than man,
feebler, vaguer. Or else how could she have been grasped, moved, turned
to curiosity, surmise, almost to a sort of dread--all at th