sterility. Her sensation was that she had passed the boundary of the
world God had created, and come into some other place, upon which He had
never looked and of which He had no knowledge.

Abruptly she felt as if her father had entered into some such region
when he forced his way out of his religion. And in this region he had
died. She had stood on the verge of it by his deathbed. Now she was in
it.

There were no Arabs journeying now. No tents huddled among the low
bushes. The last sign of vegetation was obliterated. The earth rose and
fell in a series of humps and depressions, interspersed with piles of
rock. Every shade of yellow and of brown mingled and flowed away towards
the foot of the mountains. Here and there dry water-courses showed their
teeth. Their crumbling banks were like the rind of an orange. Little
birds, the hue of the earth, with tufted crests, tripped jauntily among
the stones, fluttered for a few yards and alighted, with an air of
strained alertness, as if their minute bodies were full of trembling
wires. They were the only living things Domini could see.

She thought again of her father. In some such region as this his soul
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