become, almost suddenly, more real to her than so-called reality. Concrete, jarring, exasperating reality had melted away, and a soft world of potency stood in its place, the velvety dark flux from the earth, the delicate yet supreme life-breath in the inner air. Behind the fierce sun the dark eyes of a deeper sun were watching, and between the bluish ribs of the mountains a powerful heart was secretly beating, the heart of the earth.
Her house was what she wanted; a low L-shaped, tiled building with rough red floors and deep verandah, and the other two sides of the patio completed by the thick, dark little mango-forest outside the low wall. The square of the patio, within the precincts of the house and the mango trees, was gay with oleanders and hibiscus, and there was a basin of water in the seedy grass. The flower-pots along the verandah were full of flowering geranium and foreign flowers. At the far end of the patio, the chickens were scratching under the silent motionlessness of ragged banana trees.
There she had it; her stone, cool, dark house, every room