ks and find an outlet
into space; failing, they rose angrily, violently, in Domini's ears,
protesting, wrangling, shouting, declaiming. The darkness became like
the darkness of a nightmare. All the trees vanished, as if they fled in
fear. The rocks closed in as if to crush the train. There was a moment
in which Domini shut her eyes, like one expectant of a tremendous blow
that cannot be avoided.

She opened them to a flood of gold, out of which the face of a man
looked, like a face looking out of the heart of the sun.

CHAPTER III

It flashed upon her with the desert, with the burning heaps of carnation
and orange-coloured rocks, with the first sand wilderness, the first
brown villages glowing in the late radiance of the afternoon like carven
things of bronze, the first oasis of palms, deep green as a wave of the
sea and moving like a wave, the first wonder of Sahara warmth and Sahara
distance. She passed through the golden door into the blue country, and
saw this face, and, for a moment, moved by the exalted sensation of a
magical change in all her world, she looked at it simply as a new sight
presented, with the sun, the mighty rocks, the hard, blind villages, and
the dense trees, to her eyes, and connected it with nothing. It was part
of this strange and glorious desert region to her. That was all, for a
moment.

In the play of untempered golden light the face seemed pale. It was
narrow, rather long, with marked and prominent features, a nose with a
high bridge, a mouth with straight, red lips, and a powerful chin. The
eyes were hazel, almost yellow, with curious markings of a darker shade
in the yellow, dark centres that looked black, and dark outer circles.
The eyelashes were very long, the eyebrows thick and strongly curved.
The forehead was high, and swelled out slightly above the temples. There
was no hair on the face, which was closely shaved. Near the mouth were
two faint lines that made Domini think of physical suffering, and also
of mediaeval knights. Despite the glory of the sunshine there seemed to
be a shadow falling across the face.

This was all that Domini noticed before the spell of change and the
abrupt glory was broken, and she knew that she was staring into the face
of the man who had behaved so rudely at the station of El-Akbara. The
knowledge gave her a definite shock, and she thought that her expression
must have changed abruptly, for a dull flush rose on the stranger's thin
cheeks and