ro, opened the door.

"Can I go up the tower to see the sunset?" she asked, giving him the
card.

The man bowed low, escorted her through a long hall full of furniture
shrouded in coverings, up a staircase, along a corridor with numbered
rooms, up a second staircase and out upon a flat-terraced roof, from
which the tower soared high above the houses and palms of Beni-Mora, a
landmark visible half-a-day's journey out in the desert. A narrow spiral
stair inside the tower gained the summit.

"I'll go up alone," Domini said. "I shall stay some time and I would
rather not keep you."

She put some money into the Arab's hand. He looked pleased, yet doubtful
too for a moment. Then he seemed to banish his hesitation and, with a
deprecating smile, said something which she could not understand. She
nodded intelligently to get rid of him. Already, from the roof, she
caught sight of a great visionary panorama glowing with colour and
magic. She was impatient to climb still higher into the sky, to look
down on the world as an eagle does. So she turned away decisively and
mounted the dark, winding stair till she reached a door. She pushed it
open with some difficulty, and came out into the air at a dizzy height,
shutting the door forcibly behind her with an energetic movement of her
strong arms.

The top of the tower was small and square, and guarded by a white
parapet breast high. In the centre of it rose the outer walls and the
ceiling of the top of the staircase, which prevented a person standing
on one side of the tower from seeing anybody who was standing at the
opposite side. There was just sufficient space between parapet and
staircase wall for two people to pass with difficulty and manoeuvring.

But Domini was not concerned with such trivial details, as she would
have thought them had she thought of them. Directly she had shut the
little door and felt herself alone--alone as an eagle in the sky--she
took the step forward that brought her to the parapet, leaned her arms
on it, looked out and was lost in a passion of contemplation.

At first she did not discern any of the multitudinous minutiae in the
great evening vision beneath and around her. She only felt conscious of
depth, height, space, colour, mystery, calm. She did not measure. She
did not differentiate. She simply stood there, leaning lightly on
the snowy plaster work, and experienced something that she had never
experienced before, that she had never imagined.