the streams slipping between the sandy walls of the rills.
The inexorable sun would shine, and the desert would whisper in its blue
distances of the unseen things that always dwell beyond. And Androvsky
would be gone. Their short intercourse, so full of pain, uneasiness,
reserve, so fragmentary, so troubled by abrupt violences, by ignorance,
by a sense of horror even on the one side, and by an almost constant
suspicion on the other, would have come to an end.

She was stunned by the thought, and looked round her as if she expected
inanimate Nature to take up arms for her against this fate. Yet she did
not for a moment think of taking up arms herself. She had left the hotel
without trying to see Androvsky. She did not intend to return to it till
he was gone. The idea of seeking him never came into her mind. There is
an intensity of feeling that generates action, but there is a greater
intensity of feeling that renders action impossible, the feeling that
seems to turn a human being into a shell of stone within which burn all
the fires of creation. Domini knew that she would not move out of the
_fumoir_ till the train was creeping along the river-bed on its way from
Beni-Mora.

She had laid down the _Imitation_ upon the seat by her side, and now she
took it up. The sight of its familiar pages made her think for the first
time, "Do I love God any more?" And immediately afterwards came
the thought: "Have I ever loved him?" The knowledge of her love for
Androvsky, for this body that she had seen, for this soul that she had
seen through the body like a flame through glass, made her believe just
then that if she had ever thought--and certainly she had thought--that
she loved a being whom she had never seen, never even imaginatively
projected, she had deceived herself. The act of faith was not
impossible, but the act of love for the object on which that faith was
concentrated now seemed to her impossible. For her body, that remained
passive, was full of a riot, a fury of life. The flesh that had slept
was awakened and knew itself. And she could no longer feel that she
could love that which her flesh could not touch, that which could not
touch her flesh. And she said to herself, without terror, even without
regret, "I do not love, I never have loved, God."

She looked into the book:

"Unspeakable, indeed, is the sweetness of thy contemplation, which thou
bestowest on them that love thee."

The sweetness of thy contemplation