What depths and heights were within her, what deep, dark valleys, and what mountain peaks!  And how she travelled within herself, with swiftness of light, with speed of the wind.  What terrors of activity she knew.  Did every human being know similar terrors?

The colours everywhere deepened as day failed.  The desert spirits were at work.  She thought of Count Anteoni again, and resolved to go round to the other side of the tower.  As she moved to do this she heard once more the shifting of a foot on the plaster floor, then a step.  Evidently she had infected him with an intention similar to her own.  She went on, still hearing the step, turned the corner and stood face to face in the strong evening light with the traveller.  Their bodies almost touched in the narrow space before they both stopped, startled.  For a moment they stood still looking at each other, as people might look who have spoken together, who know something of each other’s lives, who may like or dislike, wish to avoid or to draw near to each other, but who cannot pretend that they are complete strangers, wholly indifferent to each other.  They met in the sky, almost as one bird may meet another on the wing.  And, to Domini, at any rate, it seemed as if the depth, height, space, colour, mystery and calm—­yes, even the calm—­which were above, around and beneath them, had been placed there by hidden hands as a setting for their encounter, even as the abrupt pageant of the previous day, into which the train had emerged from the blackness of the tunnel, had surely been created as a frame for the face which had looked upon her as if out of the heart of the sun.  The assumption was absurd, unreasonable, yet vital.  She did not combat it because she felt it too powerful for common sense to strive against.  And it seemed to her that the stranger felt it too, that she saw her sensation reflected in his eyes as he stood between the parapet and the staircase wall, barring—­in despite of himself—­her path.  The moment seemed long while they stood motionless.  Then the man took off his soft hat awkwardly, yet with real politeness, and stood quickly sideways against the parapet to let her pass.  She could have passed if she had brushed against him, and made a movement to do so.  Then she checked herself and looked at him again as if she expected him to speak to her.  His hat was still in his hand, and the light desert wind faintly stirred his short brown hair.  He did not speak, but stood there crushing himself against the plaster work with a sort of fierce timidity, as if he dreaded the touch of her skirt against him, and longed to make himself small, to shrivel up and let her go by in freedom.

“Thank you,” she said in French.