“Is he afraid of women as he is afraid of prayer?” she thought, and suddenly the sense of humiliation and anger left her, and was succeeded by a powerful curiosity such as she had never felt before about anyone. She realised that this curiosity had dawned in her almost at the first moment when she saw the stranger, and had been growing ever since. One circumstance after another had increased it till now it was definite, concrete. She wondered that she did not feel ashamed of such a feeling so unusual in her, and surely unworthy, like a prying thing. Of all her old indifference that side which confronted people had always been the most sturdy, the most solidly built. Without affectation she had been a profoundly incurious woman as to the lives and the concerns of others, even of those whom she knew best and was supposed to care for most. Her nature had been essentially languid in human intercourse. The excitements, troubles, even the passions of others had generally stirred her no more than a distant puppet-show stirs an absent-minded passer in the street. In Africa it seemed that her whole nature had been either violently renewed, or even changed. She could not tell which. But this strong stirring of curiosity would, she believed, have been impossible in the woman she had been but a week ago, the woman who travelled to Marseilles dulled, ignorant of herself, longing for change. Perhaps instead of being angry she ought to welcome it as a symptom of the re-creation she longed for. While she changed her gown for dinner that night she debated within herself how she would treat her fellow-guest when she met him in the _salle-a-manger_. She ought to cut him after what had occurred, she supposed. Then it seemed to her that to do so would be undignified, and would give him the impression that he had the power to offend her. She resolved to bow to him if they met face to face. Just before she went downstairs she realised how vehement her internal debate had been, and was astonished. Suzanne was putting away something in a drawer, bending down and stretching out her plump arms. “Suzanne!” Domini said. “Yes, Mam’zelle!” “How long have you been with me?” “Three years, Mam’zelle.” The maid shut the drawer and turned round, fixing her shallow, blue-grey eyes on her mistress, and standing as if she were ready to be photographed. “Would you say that I am the same sort of person to-day as I was three years ago?” Suzanne looked like a cat that has been startled by a sudden noise. “The same, Mam’zelle?” “Yes. Do you think I have altered in that time?” Suzanne considered the question with her head slightly on one side. “Only here, Mam’zelle,” she replied at length. “Here!” said Domini, rather eagerly. “Why, I have only been here twenty-six hours.” “That is true. But Mam’zelle looks as if she had a little life here, a little emotion. Mon Dieu! Mam’zelle will pardon me, but what is a woman who feels no emotion? A packet. Is it not so, Mam’zelle?”