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 café 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?
Without being aware of it she was dropping into sleep. The sound of a footstep on the wooden floor of the verandah recalled her. It was at some distance behind her. It crossed the verandah and stopped. She felt quite certain that it was the step of her fellow-traveller, not because she knew he was staying in the hotel, but rather because of the curious, uneven heaviness of the tread.
What was he doing? Looking over the parapet into the fruit gardens, where the white figures of the Arabs were flitting through the trees?
He was perfectly silent. Domini was now wide awake. The feeling of calm serenity had left her. She was nervously troubled by this presence near her, and swiftly recalled the few
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