She might as well have been in her grave.

She might have been dead to all earthy things and reveling in spirit in the glory of the physical that had escaped her in life.

And she abandoned herself to this influence.
She loved these dry, dusty cinders; she loved the crater here hidden from all save birds; she loved the desert, the earth--above all, the sun.

She was a product of the earth--a creation of the sun.

She had been an infinitesimal atom of inert something that had quickened to life under the blazing magic of the sun.