istance from it, was being
shrivelled by its heat. When all the voices of the village fainted
away she was glad, although she strained her ears to hear their fading
echoes. Suddenly she knew that she was very tired, so tired that
emotions acted upon her as physical exertion acts upon an exhausted man.
She sat down and shut her eyes. For a long time she stayed with her eyes
shut, but she knew that on the windows strange lights were glittering,
that the carriage was slowly filling with the ineffable splendours of
the west. Long afterwards she often wondered whether she endowed the
sunset of that day with supernatural glories because she was so tired.
Perhaps the salt mountain of El-Alia did not really sparkle like the
celestial mountains in the visions of the saints. Perhaps the long chain
of the Aures did not really look as if all its narrow clefts had been
powdered with the soft and bloomy leaves of unearthly violets, and
the desert was not cloudy in the distance towards the Zibans with the
magical blue she thought she saw there, a blue neither of sky nor sea,
but like the hue at the edge of a flame in the heart of a wood fire. She
often wondered, but she never knew.

The sound of a movement made her look up. Her companion was changing his
place and going to the other side of the compartment. He walked softly,
no doubt with the desire not to disturb Domini. His back was towards her
for an instant, and she noticed that he was a powerful man, though
very thin, and that his gait was heavy. It made her think again of his
labourer's hands, and she began to wonder idly what was his rank and
what he did. He sat down in the far corner on the same side as herself
and stared out of his window, crossing his legs. He wore large boots
with square toes, clumsy and unfashionable, but comfortable and good for
walking in. His clothes had obviously been made by a French tailor.
The stuff of them was grey and woolly, and they were cut tighter to
the figure than English clothes generally are. He had on a black silk
necktie, and a soft brown travelling hat dented in the middle. By the
way in which he looked out of the window, Domini judged that he, too,
was seeing the desert for the first time. There was something almost
passionately attentive in his attitude, something of strained eagerness
in that part of his face which she could see from where she was
sitting. His cheek was not pale, as she had thought at first, but brown,
obviously burn