The caravan which Domini had seen descending into the gorge reappeared, moving deliberately along the desert road towards the south.  A watch-tower peeped above the palms.  Doves were circling round it.  Many of them were white.  They flew like ivory things above this tower of glowing bronze, which slept at the foot of the pink rocks.  On the left rose a mass of blood-red earth and stone.  Slanting rays of the sun struck it, and it glowed mysteriously like a mighty jewel.

As Domini leaned out of the window, and the salt crystals sparkled to her eyes, and the palms swayed languidly above the waters, and the rose and mauve of the hills, the red and orange of the earth, streamed by 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 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