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 burnt by the sun of Africa. But she felt that underneath the
sunburn there was pallor. She fancied he might be a painter, and was
noting all the extraordinary colour effects with the definiteness of a
man who meant, perhaps, to reproduce them on canvas.

The light, which had now the peculiar, almost supernatural softness
and limpidity of light falling at evening from a declining sun in a hot
country, came full upon him, and brightened his hair. Domini saw that it
was brown with some chestnut in it, thick, and cut extremely short, as
if his head had recently been shaved. She felt convinced that he was not
French. He might be an Austrian, perhaps, or a Russian from the south of
Russia. He remained motionless in that attitude of profound observation.
It suggested great force not merely of body, but also of mind, an almost
abnormal concentration upon the thing observed. This was a man who
could surely shut out the whole world to look at a grain of sand, if he