seemed to her sometimes the finest freedom; the movement of the soul upward into the infinite obedient to the call of the great Liberator.  The love of man for woman, of woman for man, she thought of as imprisonment, bondage.  Was not her mother a slave to the man who had wrecked her life and carried her spirit beyond the chance of heaven?  Was not her father a slave to her mother?  She shrank definitely from the contemplation of herself loving, with all the strength she suspected in her heart, a human being.  In her religion only she had felt in rare moments something of love.  And now here, in this tremendous and conquering land, she felt a divine stirring in her love for Nature.  For that afternoon Nature, so often calm and meditative, or gently indifferent, as one too complete to be aware of those who lack completeness, had impetuously summoned her to worship, had ardently appealed to her for something more than a temperate watchfulness or a sober admiration.  There had been a most definite demand made upon her.  Even in her fatigue and in this dreamy twilight she was conscious of a latent excitement that was not lulled to sleep.

And as she sat there, while the darkness grew in the sky and spread secretly along the sandy rills among the trees, she wondered how much she held within her to give in answer to this cry to her of self-confident Nature.  Was it only a little?  She did not know.  Perhaps she was too tired to know.  But however much it was it must seem meagre.  What is even a woman’s heart given to the desert or a woman’s soul to the sea?  What is the worship of anyone to the sunset among the hills, or to the wind that lifts all the clouds from before the face of the moon?

A chill stole over Domini.  She felt like a very poor woman, who can never know the joy of giving, because she does not possess even a mite.

The church bell chimed again among the palms.  Domini heard voices quite clearly below her under the arcade.  A French cafe was installed there, and two or three soldiers were taking their aperitif before dinner out in the air.  They were talking of France, as people in exile talk of their country, with the deliberateness that would conceal regret and the child’s instinctive affection for the mother.  Their voices made Domini think again of the recruits, and then, because of them, of Notre Dame de la Garde, the mother of God, looking towards Africa.  She remembered the tragedy of her last confession.  Would she be able to confess here to the Father whom she had seen strolling in the tunnel?  Would she learn to know here what she really was?

How warm it was in the night, and how warmth, as it develops the fecundity of the earth, develops also the possibilities in many men and women.  Despite her lassitude of body, which kept her motionless as an idol in her chair, with her arm lying along the parapet of the verandah, Domini felt as if a confused crowd of things indefinable, but violent, was already stirring within her nature, as if this new climate was calling armed men into being.  Could she not hear the murmur of their voices, the distant clashing of their weapons?