The darkness of the shade beneath the trees in this inmost recess of the garden fell upon her like the darkness of that storm in which the desert was blotted out, and it was fearful to her because she felt that she must travel in the storm alone. Till now she had been very much alone in life and had realised that such solitude was dreary, that in it development was difficult, and that it checked the steps of the pilgrim who should go upward to the heights of life. But never till now had she felt the fierce tragedy of solitude, the utter terror of it. As she sat in the _fumoir_, looking down on the smoothly-raked sand, she said to herself that till this moment she had never had any idea of the meaning of solitude. It was the desert within a human soul, but the desert without the sun. And she knew this because at last she loved. The dark and silent flood of passion that lay within her had been released from its boundaries, the old landmarks were swept away for ever, the face of the world was changed. She loved Androvsky. Everything in her loved him; all that she had been, all that she was, all that she could ever be loved him; that which was physical in her, that which was spiritual, the brain, the heart, the soul, body and flame burning within it--all that made her the wonder that is woman, loved him. She was love for Androvsky. It seemed to her that she was nothing else, had never been anything else. The past years were nothing, the pain by which she was stricken when her mother fled, by which she was tormented when her father died blaspheming, were nothing. There was no room in her for anything but love of Androvsky. At this moment even her love of God seemed to have been expelled from her. Afterwards she remembered that. She did not think of it now. For her there was a universe with but one figure in it--Androvsky. She was unconscious of herself except as love for him. She was unconscious of any Creative Power to whom she owed the fact that he was there to be loved by her. She was passion, and he was that to which passion flowed. The world was the stream and the sea.