in the flames of the sun before the passing train like a barbaric
procession, to the sound of the hidden drums, the cry of the hidden
priest, and all the whispering melodies of these strange and unknown
lives, tears started into her eyes. The entrance into this land of flame
and colour, through its narrow and terrific portal, stirred her almost
beyond her present strength. The glory of this world mounted to her
heart, oppressing it. The embrace of Nature was so violent that it
crushed her. She felt like a little fly that had sought to wing its
way to the sun and, at a million miles' distance 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