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

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

       She thought again of her father. In some such region as this his soul must 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 if she were tasting a new wine, and she was conscious at once that she had never before breathed such air. There was a wonderful, a startling flavour in it, the flavour of gigantic spaces and of rolling leagues of emptiness. Neither among mountains nor upon the sea had she ever found an atmosphere so fiercely pure, clean and lively with unutterable freedom. She leaned out to it, shutting her eyes. And now that she saw nothing her palate savoured it more intensely. The thought of her father fled from her. All detailed thoughts, all the minutia of the mind were swept away. She was bracing herself to an encounter with something gigantic, something unshackled, the being from whose lips this wonderful breath 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’s soul, coming forth from the temple of the body through the temple door. As Domini leaned out, seeing nothing, she was conscious that in this breath she drank there was a soul, and it seemed to her that it was the soul which flames in the centre of things, and beyond. She could not think any longer of her father as an outcast because he had abandoned a 

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