made her feel as if she could gladly be a martyr for
unseen human beings, as if sacrifice would be an easy thing if made for
those to whom such beauty would appeal. Brotherhood rose up and cried in
her, as it surely sang in the sunset, in the mountains, the palm groves
and the desert. The flame above the hills, their purple outline, the
moving, feathery trees; dark under the rose-coloured glory of the west,
and most of all the immeasurably remote horizons, each moment more
strange and more eternal, made her long to make this harsh stranger
happy.

"One ought to find happiness here," she said to him very simply.

She saw his hand strain itself round the wood of his stick.

"Why?" he said.

He turned right round to her and looked at her with a sort of anger.

"Why should you suppose so?" he added, speaking quite quickly, and
without his former uneasiness and consciousness.

"Because it is so beautiful and so calm."

"Calm!" he said. "Here!"

There was a sound of passionate surprise in his voice. Domini was
startled. She felt as if she were fighting, and must fight hard if she
were not to be beaten to the dust. But when she looked at him she could
find no weapons. She said nothing. In a moment he spoke again.

"You find calm here," he said slowly. "Yes, I see."

His head dropped lower and his face hardened as he looked over the edge
of the parapet to the village, the blue desert. Then he lifted his eyes
to the mountains and the clear sky and the shadowy moon. Each element in
the evening scene was examined with a fierce, painful scrutiny, as if he
was resolved to wring from each its secret.

"Why, yes," he added in a low, muttering voice full of a sort of
terrified surprise, "it is so. You are right. Why, yes, it is calm
here."

He spoke like a man who had been suddenly convinced, beyond power of
further unbelief, of something he had never suspected, never dreamed of.
And the conviction seemed to be bitter to him, even alarming.

"But away out there must be the real home of peace, I think," Domini
said.

"Where?" said the man, quickly.

She pointed towards the south.

"In the depths of the desert," she said. "Far away from civilisation,
far away from modern men and modern women, and all the noisy trifles we
are accustomed to."

He looked towards the south eagerly. In everything he did there was a
flamelike intensity, as if he could not perform an ordinary action, or
turn his eyes upon any object, witho