The Garden of Allah

by Robert Hichens

  CHAPTER II

  Long before dawn the Italian waiter rolled off his little bed, put a capon his head, and knocked at Domini's and at Suzanne Charpot's doors.

  It was still dark, and still raining, when the two women came out to getinto the carriage that was to take them to the station. The place de laMarine was a sea of mud, brown and sticky as nougat. Wet palms drippedby the railing near a desolate kiosk painted green and blue. The sky wasgrey and low. Curtains of tarpaulin were let down on each side of thecarriage, and the coachman, who looked like a Maltese, and wore a roundcap edged with pale yellow fur, was muffled up to the ears. Suzanne'sround, white face was puffy with fatigue, and her dark eyes, generallygood-natured and hopeful, were dreary, and squinted slightly, as shetipped the Italian waiter, and handed her mistress's dressing-bag andrug into the carriage. The waiter stood an the discoloured step, yawningfrom ear to ear. Even the tip could not excite him. Before the carriagestarted he had gone into the hotel and banged the door. The horsestrotted quickly through the mud, descending the hill. One of thetarpaulin curtains had been left unbuttoned by the coachman. It flappedto and fro, and when its movement was outward Domini could catchshort glimpses of mud, of glistening palm-leaves with yellow stems, ofgas-lamps, and of something that was like an extended grey nothingness.This was the sea. Twice she saw Arabs trudging along, holding theirskirts up in a bunch sideways, and showing legs bare beyond the knees.Hoods hid their faces. They appeared to be agitated by the weather,and to be continually trying to plant their naked feet in dry places.Suzanne, who sat opposite to Domini, had her eyes shut. If she had notfrom time to time passed her tongue quickly over her full, pale lips shewould have looked like a dead thing. The coquettish angle at which herlittle black hat was set on her head seemed absurdly inappropriateto the occasion and her mood. It suggested a hat being worn at somefestival. Her black, gloved hands were tightly twisted together in herlap, and she allowed her plump body to wag quite loosely with the motionof the carriage, making no attempt at resistance. She had really theappearance of a corpse sitting up. The tarpaulin flapped monotonously.The coachman cried out in the dimness to his horses like a bird,prolonging his call drearily, and then violently cracking his whip.Domini kept her eyes fixed on the loose tarpaulin, so that she might notmiss one of the wet visions it discovered by its reiterated movement.She had not slept at all, and felt as if there was a gritty drynessclose behind her eyes. She also felt very alert and enduring, but notin the least natural. Had some extraordinary event occurred; had thecarriage, for instance, rolled over the edge of the road into the sea,she was convinced that she could not have managed to be either surprisedor alarmed, If anyone had asked her whether she was tired she wouldcertainly have answered "No."

  Like her mother, Domini was of a gipsy type. She stood five feet ten,had thick, almost coarse and wavy black hair that was parted in themiddle of her small head, dark, almond-shaped, heavy-lidded eyes, and aclear, warmly-white skin, unflecked with colour. She never flushed underthe influence of excitement or emotion. Her forehead was broad and low.Her eyebrows were long and level, thicker than most women's. The shapeof her face was oval, with a straight, short nose, a short, but ratherprominent and round chin, and a very expressive mouth, not very small,slightly depressed at the corners, with perfect teeth, and red lipsthat were unusually flexible. Her figure was remarkably athletic, withshoulders that were broad in a woman, and a naturally small waist. Herhands and feet were also small. She walked splendidly, like a Syrian,but without his defiant insolence. In her face, when it was in repose,there was usually an expression of still indifference, some thought ofopposition. She looked her age, and had never used a powderpuff in herlife. She could smile easily and easily become animated, and in heranimation there was often fire, as in her calmness there was sometimescloud. Timid people were generally disconcerted by her appearance, andher manner did not always reassure them. Her obvious physical strengthhad something surprising in it, and woke wonder as to how it had been,or might be, used. Even when her eyes were shut she looked singularlywakeful.

  Domini and Suzanne got to the station of Robertville much too early.The large hall in which they had to wait was miserably lit, blank anddecidedly cold. The ticket-office was on the left, and the room wasdivided into two parts by a broad, low counter, on which the heavyluggage was placed before being weighed by two unshaven and hulking menin blue smocks. Three or four Arab touts, in excessively shabby Europeanclothes and turbans, surrounded Domini with offers of assistance. One,the dirtiest of the group, with a gaping eye-socket, in which therewas no eye, succeeded by his passionate volubility and impudence inattaching himself to her in a sort of official capacity. He spokefluent, but faulty, French, which attracted Suzanne, and, beingabnormally muscular and active, in an amazingly short time got holdof all their boxes and bags and ranged them on the counter. He thenindulged in a dramatic performance, which he apparently consideredlikely to rouse into life and attention the two unshaven men in smocks,who were smoking cigarettes, and staring vaguely at the metal sheet onwhich the luggage was placed to be weighed. Suzanne remained expectantlyin attendance, and Domini, having nothing to do, and seeing no bench torest on, walked slowly up and down the hall near the entrance.

  It was now half-past four in the morning, and in the air Domini fanciedthat she felt the cold breath of the coming dawn. Beyond the opening ofthe station, as she passed and repassed in her slow and aimless walk,she saw the soaking tarpaulin curtains of the carriage she had just leftglistening in the faint lamp-light. After a few minutes the Arabs shehad noticed on the road entered. Their brown, slipperless feet werecaked with sticky mud, and directly they found themselves under shelterin a dry place they dropped the robes they had been holding up, and,bending down, began to flick it off on to the floor with their delicatefingers. They did this with extraordinary care and precision, rubbed thesoles of their feet repeatedly against the boards, and then put on theiryellow slippers and threw back the hoods which had been drawn over theirheads.

  A few French passengers straggled in, yawning and looking irritable.The touts surrounded them, with noisy offers of assistance. The men insmocks still continued to smoke and to stare at the metal sheet on thefloor. Although the luggage now extended in quite a long line upon thecounter they paid no attention to it, or to the violent and reiteratedcries of the Arabs who stood behind it, anxious to earn a tip by gettingit weighed and registered quickly. Apparently they were wrapped insavage dreams. At length a light shone through the small opening of theticket-office, the men in smocks stirred and threw down their cigarettestumps, and the few travellers pressed forward against the counter,and pointed to their boxes with their sticks and hands. Suzanne Charpotassumed an expression of attentive suspicion, and Domini ceasedfrom walking up and down. Several of the recruits came in hastily,accompanied by two Zouaves. They were wet, and looked dazed and tiredout. Grasping their bags and bundles they went towards the platform. Atrain glided slowly in, gleaming faintly with lights. Domini's trunkswere slammed down on the weighing machine, and Suzanne, drawing out herpurse, took her stand before the shining hole of the ticket-office.

  In the wet darkness there rose up a sound like a child calling out aninsulting remark. This was followed immediately by the piping of a horn.With a jerk the train started, passed one by one the station lamps, and,with a steady jangling and rattling, drew out into the shrouded country.Domini was in a wretchedly-lit carriage with three Frenchmen, facingthe door which opened on to the platform. The man opposite to her wasenormously fat, with a coal-black beard growing up to his eyes. He woreblack gloves and trousers, a huge black cloth hat, and a thick blackcloak with a black buckle near the throat. His eyes were shut, and hislarge, heavy head drooped forward. Domini wondered if he was travellingto the funeral of some relative. The two other men, one of whom lookedlike a commercial traveller, kept shifting their feet upon the hot-watertins that lay on the floor, clearing their throats and sighing loudly.One of them coughed, let down the window, spat, drew the wind
ow up, satsideways, put his legs suddenly up on the seat and groaned. The trainrattled more harshly, and shook from side to side as it got up speed.Rain streamed down the window-panes, through which it was impossible tosee anything.

  Domini still felt alert, but an overpowering sensation of dreariness hadcome to her. She did not attribute this sensation to fatigue. She didnot try to analyse it. She only felt as if she had never seen or heardanything that was not cheerless, as if she had never known anything thatwas not either sad, or odd, or inexplicable. What did she remember? Atrain of trifles that seemed to have been enough to fill all her life;the arrival of the nervous and badly-dressed recruits at the wharf,their embarkation, their last staring and pathetic look at France,the stormy voyage, the sordid illness of almost everyone on board, theapproach long after sundown to the small and unknown town, of which itwas impossible to see anything clearly, the marshalling of the recruitspale with sickness, their pitiful attempt at cheerful singing, angrilychecked by the Zouaves in charge of them, their departure up the hillcarrying their poor belongings, the sleepless night, the sound of therain falling, the scents rising from the unseen earth. The tap of theItalian waiter at the door, the damp drive to the station, the long waitthere, the sneering signal, followed by the piping horn, the jerking andrattling of the carriage, the dim light within it falling upon the stoutFrenchman in his mourning, the streaming water upon the window-panes.These few sights, sounds, sensations were like the story of a life toDomini just then, were more, were like the whole of life; alwaysdull noise, strange, flitting, pale faces, and an unknown regionthat remained perpeturally invisible, and that must surely be ugly orterrible.

  The train stopped frequently at lonely little stations. Domini lookedout, letting down the window for a moment. At each station she saw atiny house with a peaked roof, a wooden railing dividing the platformfrom the country road, mud, grass bending beneath the weight ofwater-drops, and tall, dripping, shaggy eucalyptus trees. Sometimes thestation-master's children peered at the train with curious eyes, anddepressed-looking Arabs, carefully wrapped up, their mouths and chinscovered by folds of linen, got in and out slowly.

  Once Domini saw two women, in thin, floating white dresses and spangledveils, hurrying by like ghosts in the dark. Heavy silver ornamentsjangled on their ankles, above their black slippers splashed with mud.Their sombre eyes stared out from circles of Kohl, and, with stained,claret-coloured hands, whose nails were bright red, they clasped theirlight and bridal raiment to their prominent breasts. They were escortedby a gigantic man, almost black, with a zigzag scar across the leftside of his face, who wore a shining brown burnous over a grey woollenjacket. He pushed the two women into the train as if he were pushingbales, and got in after them, showing enormous bare legs, with calvesthat stuck out like lumps of iron.

  The darkness began to fade, and presently, as the grey light grew slowlystronger, the rain ceased, and it was possible to see through the glassof the carriage window.

  The country began to discover itself, as if timidly, to Domini's eyes.She had recently noticed that the train was going very slowly, and shecould now see why. They were mounting a steep incline. The rich, dampearth of the plains beyond Robertville, with its rank grass, its moistploughland and groves of eucalyptus, was already left behind. The trainwas crawling in a cup of the hills, grey, sterile and abandoned,without roads or houses, without a single tree. Small, grey-green bushesflourished here and there on tiny humps of earth, but they seemed ratherto emphasise than to diminish the aspect of poverty presented by thesoil, over which the dawn, rising from the wet arms of night, shed acold and reticent illumination. By a gash in the rounded hills, wherethe earth was brownish yellow, a flock of goats with flapping earstripped slowly, followed by two Arab boys in rags. One of the boys wasplaying upon a pipe coverd with red arabesques. Domini heard two orthree bars of the melody. They were ineffably wild and bird-like,very clear and sweet. They seemed to her to match exactly the pure andascetic light cast by the dawn over these bare, grey hills, and theystirred her abruptly from the depressed lassitude in which the drearychances of recent travel had drowned her. She began, with a certainfaint excitement, to realise that these low, round-backed hills wereAfrica, that she was leaving behind the sea, so many of whose wavesswept along European shores, that somewhere, beyond the broken and nearhorizon line toward which the train was creeping, lay the great desert,her destination, with its pale sands and desolate cities, its sunburnttribes of workers, its robbers, warriors and priests, its etherealmysteries of mirage, its tragic splendours of colour, of tempest andof heat. A sense of a wider world than the compressed world into whichphysical fatigue had decoyed her woke in her brain and heart. The littleArab, playing carelessly upon his pipe with the red arabesques, was sooninvisible among his goats beside the dry water-course that was probablythe limit of his journeying, but Domini felt that like a musician at thehead of a procession he had played her bravely forward into the dawn andAfrica.

  At Ah-Souf Domini changed into another train and had the carriage toherself. The recruits had reached their destination. Hers was a longerpilgramage and still towards the sun. She could not afterwards rememberwhat she thought about during this part of her journey. Subsequentevents so coloured all her memories of Africa that every fold of itssun-dried soil was endowed in her mind with the significance of a livingthing. Every palm beside a well, every stunted vine and clamberingflower upon an _auberge_ wall, every form of hill and silhouette ofshadow, became in her heart intense with the beauty and the pathos sheused, as a child, to think must lie beyond the sunset.

  And so she forgot.

  A strange sense of leaving all things behind had stolen over her. Shewas really fatigued by travel and by want of sleep, but she did notknow it. Lying back in her seat, with her head against the dirty whitecovering of the shaking carriage, she watched the great change that wascoming over the land.

  It seemed as if God were putting forth His hand to withdraw graduallyall things of His creation, all the furniture He had put into the greatPalace of the world; as if He meant to leave it empty and utterly naked.

  So Domini thought.

  First He took the rich and shaggy grass, and all the little flowersthat bloomed modestly in it. Then He drew away the orange groves, theoleander and the apricot trees, the faithful eucalyptus with its palestems and tressy foliage, the sweet waters that fertilised the soil,making it soft and brown where the plough seamed it into furrows, thetufted plants and giant reeds that crowd where water is. And still,as the train ran on, His gifts were fewer. At last even the palmswere gone, and the Barbary fig displayed no longer among the crumblingboulders its tortured strength, and the pale and fantastic evolutionsof its unnatural foliage. Stones lay everywhere upon the pale yellow orgrey-brown earth. Crystals glittered in the sun like shallow jewels, andfar away, under clouds that were dark and feathery, appeared hard andrelentless mountains, which looked as if they were made of iron carvedinto horrible and jagged shapes. Where they fell into ravines theybecame black. Their swelling bosses and flanks, sharp sometimes asthe spines of animals, were steel coloured. Their summits were purple,deepening where the clouds came down to ebony.

  Journeying towards these terrible fastnesses were caravans on whichDomini looked with a heavy and lethargic interest. Many Kabyles, fairerthan she was, moved slowly on foot towards their rock villages.

  Over the withered earth they went towards the distant mountains and theclouds. The sun was hidden. The wind continued to rise. Sand found itsway in through the carriage windows. The mountains, as Domini saw themmore clearly, looked more gloomy, more unearthly. There was somethingunnatural in their hard outlines, in the rigid mystery of theirinnumerable clefts. That all these people should be journeying towardsthem was pathetic, and grieved the imagination.

  The wind seemed so cold, now the sun was hidden, that she had drawn boththe windows up and thrown a rug over her. She put her feet up on theopposite seat, and half closed her eyes. But she still turned themtowards the glass
on her left, and watched. It seemed to herquite impossible that this shaking and slowly moving train had anydestination. The desolation of the country had become so absolute thatshe could not conceive of anything but still greater desolation lyingbeyond. She had no feeling that she was merely traversing a tract ofsterility. Her sensation was that she had passed the boundary of theworld God had created, and come into some other place, upon which He hadnever looked and of which He had no knowledge.

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

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

  She thought again of her father. In some such region as this his soulmust 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 ifshe were tasting a new wine, and she was conscious at once that shehad never before breathed such air. There was a wonderful, a startlingflavour in it, the flavour of gigantic spaces and of rolling leagues ofemptiness. Neither among mountains nor upon the sea had she ever foundan atmosphere so fiercely pure, clean and lively with unutterablefreedom. She leaned out to it, shutting her eyes. And now that she sawnothing her palate savoured it more intensely. The thought of her fatherfled from her. All detailed thoughts, all the minutia of the mind wereswept away. She was bracing herself to an encounter with somethinggigantic, something unshackled, the being from whose lips this wonderfulbreath flowed.

  When two lovers kiss their breath mingles, and, if they really love,each is conscious that in the breath of the loved one is the loved one'ssoul, coming forth from the temple of the body through the temple door.As Domini leaned out, seeing nothing, she was conscious that in thisbreath she drank there was a soul, and it seemed to her that it was thesoul which flames in the centre of things, and beyond. She could notthink any longer of her father as an outcast because he had abandoned areligion. For all religions were surely here, marching side by side, andbehind them, background to them, there was something far greater thanany religion. Was it snow or fire? Was it the lawlessness of that whichhas made laws, or the calm of that which has brought passion into being?Greater love than is in any creed, or greater freedom than is in anyhuman liberty? Domini only felt that if she had ever been a slave atthis moment she would have died of joy, realising the boundless freedomthat circles this little earth.

  "Thank God for it!" she murmured aloud.

  Her own words woke her to a consciousness of ordinary things--or madeher sleep to the eternal.

  She closed the window and sat down.

  A little later the sun came out again, and the various shades of yellowand of orange that played over the wrinkled earth deepened and glowed.Domini had sunk into a lethargy so complete that, though not asleep, shewas scarcely aware of the sun. She was dreaming of liberty.

  Presently the train slackened and stopped. She heard a loud chatteringof many voices and looked out. The sun was now shining brilliantly,and she saw a station crowded with Arabs in white burnouses, who werevociferously greeting friends in the train, were offering enormousoranges for sale to the passengers, or were walking up and down gazingcuriously into the carriages, with the unblinking determination andindifference to a return of scrutiny which she had already noticed andthought animal. A guard came up, told her the place was El-Akbara, andthat the train would stay there ten minutes to wait for the train fromBeni-Mora. She decided to get out and stretch her cramped limbs. Onthe platform she found Suzanne, looking like a person who had just beenslapped. One side of the maid's face was flushed and covered with afaint tracery of tiny lines. The other was greyish white. Sleep hungin her eyes, over which the lids drooped as if they were partiallyparalysed. Her fingers were yellow from peeling an orange, and her smartlittle hat was cocked on one side. There were grains of sand on herblack gown, and when she saw her mistress she at once began tocompress her lips, and to assume the expression of obstinate patiencecharacteristic of properly-brought-up servants who find themselvestravelling far from home in outlandish places.

  "Have you been asleep, Suzanne?"

  "No, Mam'zelle."

  "You've had an orange?"

  "I couldn't get it down, Mam'zelle."

  "Would you like to see if you can get a cup of coffee here?"

  "No, thank you, Mam'zelle. I couldn't touch this Arab stuff."

  "We shall soon be there now."

  Suzanne made all her naturally small features look much smaller, glanceddown at her skirt, and suddenly began to shake the grains of sand fromit in an outraged manner, at the same time extending her left foot. Twoor three young Arabs came up and stood, staring, round her. Their eyeswere magnificent, and gravely observant. Suzanne went on shaking andpatting her skirt, and Domini walked away down the platform, wonderingwhat a French maid's mind was like. Suzanne's certainly had itslimitations. It was evident that she was horrified by the sight of barelegs. Why?

  As Domini walked along the platform among the fruit-sellers, the guides,the turbaned porters with their badges, the staring children and theragged wanderers who thronged about the train, she thought of the desertto which she was now so near. It lay, she knew, beyond the terrificwall of rock that faced her. But she could see no opening. The toweringsummits of the cliffs, jagged as the teeth of a wolf, broke crudely uponthe serene purity of the sky. Somewhere, concealed in the darkness ofthe gorge at their feet, was the mouth from which had poured forth thatwonderful breath, quivering with freedom and with unearthly things. Thesun was already declining, and the light it cast becoming softened andromantic. Soon there would be evening in the desert. Then there wouldbe night. And she would be there in the night with all things that thedesert holds.

  A train of camels was passing on the white road that descended into theshadow of the gorge. Some savage-looking men accompanied them, cryingcontinually, "Oosh! Oosh!" They disappeared, desert-men with theirdesert-beasts, bound no doubt on some tremendous journey through theregions of the sun. Where would they at last unlade the groaning camels?Domini saw them in the midst of dunes red with the dying fires of thewest. And their shadows lay along the sands like weary things reposing.

  She started when a low voice spoke to her in French, and, turning round,saw a tall Arab boy, magnificently dressed in pale blue cloth trousers,a Zouave jacket braided with gold, and a fez, standing near her. She wasstruck by the colour of his skin, which was faint as the colour of _cafeau lait_, and by the contrast between his huge bulk and his languid,almost effeminate, demeanour. As she turned he smiled at her calmly, andlifted one hand toward the wall of rock.

  "Madame has seen the desert?" he asked.

  "Never," answered Domini.

  "It is the garden of oblivion," he said, still in a low voice, andspeaking with a delicate refinement that was almost mincing. "In thedesert one forgets everything; even the little heart one loves, and thedesire of one's own soul."

  "How can that be?" asked Domini.

  "Shal-lah. It is the will of God. One remembers nothing any more."

  His eyes were fixed upon the gigantic pinnacles of the rocks. There wassomething fanatical and highly imaginative in their gaze.

  "What is your name?" Domini asked.

  "Batouch, Madame. You are going to Beni-Mora?"

  "Yes, Batouch."

  "I too. To-night, unde
r the mimosa trees, I shall compose a poem. Itwill be addressed to Irena, the dancing-girl. She is like the littlemoon when it first comes up above the palm trees."

  Just then the train from Beni-Mora ran into the station, and Dominiturned to seek her carriage. As she was coming to it she noticed, withthe pang of the selfish traveller who wishes to be undisturbed, thata tall man, attended by an Arab porter holding a green bag, was at thedoor of it and was evidently about to get in. He glanced round as Dominicame up, half drew back rather awkwardly as if to allow her to precedehim, then suddenly sprang in before her. The Arab lifted in the bag,and the man, endeavouring hastily to thrust some money into his hand,dropped the coin, which fell down between the step of the carriageand the platform. The Arab immediately made a greedy dive after it,interposing his body between Domini and the train; and she was obligedto stand waiting while he looked for it, grubbing frantically inthe earth with his brown fingers, and uttering muffled exclamations,apparently of rage. Meanwhile, the tall man had put the green bag upon the rack, gone quickly to the far side of the carriage, and sat downlooking out of the window.

  Domini was struck by the mixture of indecision and blundering hastewhich he had shown, and by his impoliteness. Evidently he was not agentleman, she thought, or he would surely have obeyed his first impulseand allowed her to get into the train before him. It seemed, too, asif he were determined to be discourteous, for he sat with his shoulderdeliberately turned towards the door, and made no attempt to get hisArab out of the way, although the train was just about to start. Dominiwas very tired, and she began to feel angry with him, contemptuous too.The Arab could not find the money, and the little horn now piped itswarning of departure. It was absolutely necessary for her to get in atonce if she did not mean to stay at El-Akbara. She tried to pass thegrovelling Arab, but as she did so he suddenly sprang up, jumped onto the step of the carriage, and, thrusting his body half through thedoorway, began to address a torrent of Arabic to the passenger within.The horn sounded again, and the carriage jerked backwards preparatory tostarting on its way to Beni-Mora.

  Domini caught hold of the short European jacket the Arab was wearing,and said in French:

  "You must let me get in at once. The train is going."

  The man, however, intent on replacing the coin he had lost, took nonotice of her, but went on vociferating and gesticulating. The travellersaid something in Arabic. Domini was now very angry. She gripped thejacket, exerted all her force, and pulled the Arab violently from thedoor. He alighted on the platform beside her and nearly fell. Before hehad recovered himself she sprang up into the train, which began tomove at that very moment. As she got in, the man who had caused all thebother was leaning forward with a bit of silver in his hand, looking asif he were about to leave his seat. Domini cast a glance of contempt athim, and he turned quickly to the window again and stared out, at thesame time putting the coin back into his pocket. A dull flush rose onhis cheek, but he attempted no apology, and did not even offer to fastenthe lower handle of the door.

  "What a boor!" Domini thought as she bent out of the window to do it.

  When she turned from the door, after securing the handle, she found thecarriage full of a pale twilight. The train was stealing into the gorge,following the caravan of camels which she had seen disappearing. Shepaid no more attention to her companion, and her feeling of acuteirritation against him died away for the moment. The towering cliffscast mighty shadows, the darkness deepened, the train, quickening itsspeed, seemed straining forward into the arms of night. There was achill in the air. Domini drank it into her lungs again, and againwas startled, stirred, by the life and the mentality of it. She wasconscious of receiving it with passion, as if, indeed, she held her lipsto a mouth and drank some being's very nature into hers. She forgot herrecent vexation and the man who had caused it. She forgot everything inmere sensation. She had no time to ask, "Whither am I going?" She feltlike one borne upon a wave, seaward, to the wonder, to the danger,perhaps, of a murmuring unknown. The rocks leaned forward; their teethwere fastened in the sky; they enclosed the train, banishing the sun andthe world from all the lives within it. She caught a fleeting glimpse ofrushing waters far beneath her; of crumbling banks, covered with debrislike the banks of a disused quarry; of shattered boulders, grouped in awild disorder, as if they had been vomited forth from some underworldor cast headlong from the sky; of the flying shapes of fruit trees,mulberries and apricot trees, oleanders and palms; of dull yellow wallsguarding pools the colour of absinthe, imperturbable and still. A strongimpression of increasing cold and darkness grew in her, and the noisesof the train became hollow, and seemed to be expanding, as if they werestriving to press through the impending rocks and find an outletinto space; failing, they rose angrily, violently, in Domini's ears,protesting, wrangling, shouting, declaiming. The darkness became likethe darkness of a nightmare. All the trees vanished, as if they fled infear. The rocks closed in as if to crush the train. There was a momentin which Domini shut her eyes, like one expectant of a tremendous blowthat cannot be avoided.

  She opened them to a flood of gold, out of which the face of a manlooked, like a face looking out of the heart of the sun.