“Why?” he said.
He turned right round to her and looked at her with a sort of anger.
“Why should you suppose so?” he added, speaking quite quickly, and without his former uneasiness and consciousness.
“Because it is so beautiful and so calm.”
“Calm!” he said. “Here!”
There was a sound of passionate surprise in his voice. Domini was startled. She felt as if she were fighting, and must fight hard if she were not to be beaten to the dust. But when she looked at him she could find no weapons. She said nothing. In a moment he spoke again.
“You find calm here,” he said slowly. “Yes, I see.”
His head dropped lower and his face hardened as he looked over the edge of the parapet to the village, the blue desert. Then he lifted his eyes to the mountains and the clear sky and the shadowy moon. Each element in the evening scene was examined with a fierce, painful scrutiny, as if he was resolved to wring from each its secret.
“Why, yes,” he added in a low, muttering voice full of a sort of terrified surprise, “it is so. You are right. Why, yes, it is calm here.”
He spoke like a man who had been suddenly convinced, beyond power of further unbelief, of something he had never suspected, never dreamed of. And the conviction seemed to be bitter to him, even alarming.