Although she was now accustomed to the music of Africa, Domini could never hear it without feeling the barbarity of the land from which it rose, the wildness of the people who made and who loved it.  Always it suggested to her an infinite remoteness, as if it were music sounding at the end of the world, full of half-defined meanings, melancholy yet fierce passion, longings that, momentarily satisfied, continually renewed themselves, griefs that were hidden behind thin veils like the women of the East, but that peered out with expressive eyes, hinting their story and desiring assuagement.  And tonight the meaning of the music seemed deeper than it had been before.  She thought of it as an outside echo of the voices murmuring in her mind and heart, and the voices murmuring in the mind and heart of Androvsky, broken voices some of them, but some strong, fierce, tense and alive with meaning.  And as she sat there alone she thought this unity of music drew her closer to the desert than she had ever been before, and drew Androvsky with her, despite his great reserve.  In the heart of the desert he would surely let her see at last fully into his heart.  When he came back in the night from the priest he would speak.  She was waiting for that.

The moon was mounting.  Its light grew stronger.  She looked across the sands and saw fires in the city, and suddenly she said to herself, “This is the vision of the sand-diviner realised in my life.  He saw me as I am now, in this place.”  And she remembered the scene in the garden, the crouching figure, the extended arms, the thin fingers tracing swift patterns in the sand, the murmuring voice.

To-night she felt deeply expectant, but almost sad, encompassed by the mystery that hangs in clouds about human life and human relations.  What could be that great joy of which the Diviner had spoken?  A woman’s great joy that starred the desert with flowers and made the dry places run with sweet waters.  What could it be?

Suddenly she felt again the oppression of spirit she had been momentarily conscious of in the afternoon.  It was like a load descending upon her, and, almost instantly, communicated itself to her body.  She was conscious of a sensation of unusual weariness, uneasiness, even dread, then again of an intensity of life that startled her.  This intensity remained, grew in her.  It was as if the principle of life, like a fluid, were being poured into her out of the vials of God, as if the little cup that was all she had were too small to contain the precious liquid.  That seemed to her to be the cause of the pain of which she was conscious.  She was being given more than she felt herself capable of possessing.  She got up from her chair, unable to remain still.  The movement, slight though it was, seemed to remove a veil of darkness that had hung over her and to let in upon her a flood of light.  She caught hold of the canvas of the tent.  For a moment she felt weak as a child, then strong as an Amazon.  And