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 mounted to his rugged forehead. He glanced out of the window
and moved his hands uneasily. Domini noticed that they scarcely tallied
with his face. Though scrupulously clean, they looked like the hands of
a labourer, hard, broad, and brown. Even his wrists, and a small section
of his left forearm, which showed as he lifted his left hand from one
knee to the other, were heavily tinted by the sun. The spaces between
the fingers were wide, as they usually are in hands accustomed to
grasping implements, but the fingers themselves were rather delicate and