l
must surely be wandering, far away from God.

She let down the glass.

The wind was really cold and blowing gustily. She drank it in as if
she were tasting a new wine, and she was conscious at once that she
had never before breathed such air. There was a wonderful, a startling
flavour in it, the flavour of gigantic spaces and of rolling leagues of
emptiness. Neither among mountains nor upon the sea had she ever found
an atmosphere so fiercely pure, clean and lively with unutterable
freedom. She leaned out to it, shutting her eyes. And now that she saw
nothing her palate savoured it more intensely. The thought of her father
fled from her. All detailed thoughts, all the minutia of the mind were
swept away. She was bracing herself to an encounter with something
gigantic, something unshackled, the being from whose lips this wonderful
breath flowed.

When two lovers kiss their breath mingles, and, if they really love,
each is conscious that in the breath of the loved one is the loved one's
soul, coming forth from the temple of the body through the temple door.
As Domini leaned out, seeing nothing, she was conscious that in this
breath she drank there was a soul, and it seemed to her that it was the
soul which flames in the centre of things, and beyond. She could not
think any longer of her father as an outcast because he had abandoned a
religion. For all religions were surely here, marching side by side, and
behind them, background to them, there was something far greater than
any religion. Was it snow or fire? Was it the lawlessness of that which
has made laws, or the calm of that which has brought passion into being?
Greater love than is in any creed, or greater freedom than is in any
human liberty? Domini only felt that if she had ever been a slave at
this moment she would have died of joy, realising the boundless freedom
that circles this little earth.

"Thank God for it!" she murmured aloud.

Her own words woke her to a consciousness of ordinary things--or made
her sleep to the eternal.

She closed the window and sat down.

A little later the sun came out again, and the various shades of yellow
and of orange that played over the wrinkled earth deepened and glowed.
Domini had sunk into a lethargy so complete that, though not asleep, she
was scarcely aware of the sun. She was dreaming of liberty.

Presently the train slackened and stopped. She heard a loud chattering
of many voices and looked out. The sun was