"Like a fool."
"And then, Claire, then--?"
"It seemed to me that I died in most horrible pain. I lived once more
when you said, outside my tent, 'Claire, time to get up.' You see, I
slept too much last night."
And again she shuddered. A look of relief shot into Renfrew's face.
"All this came from your mad performance to those Moors," he said. "You
impersonate so vividly that even sleep cannot release your genius, and
bring it out from the world which you have deliberately forced it to
enter."
"But, Desmond, I impersonated the charmer of the snake, not the snake
itself."
"Oh, in a dream the mind always wanders a little from the event that has
caused the dream. It is like a faulty mimic who strives to reproduce
with exactitude and slightly fails. Time to go, Absalem?"
The dragoman had come up.
As they rode down the mountain a strange thing occurred, strange at
least in connection with Claire's narrative of the night. Mohammed, who
was riding just in front of them, pulled up his mule beside a thicket at
the wayside, and, turning his head, signed to them to be silent. Then,
pursing his lips, he whistled a shrill little tune. In a moment an
answer came from the thicket; Claire glanced at Renfrew with a slight
smile. Here was a sort of side light of reality thrown upon her dream
and upon their conversation. Mohammed whistled again. The echo followed.
And then suddenly a bird flew out, almost into his face, and, startled,
swerved and darted away across the gorge into the dense woods beyond.
"A charm of birds," Claire murmured to Renfrew, as they rode on. "The
summoning tune--what can resist it?"
"Claire," he said, almost reproachfully, "you speak like a fatalist."
"And I believe I am one," she answered. "Destiny is not only a phantom
but also a fact. Mine is marked out for me and known--"
"To whom? Not to yourself?"
"Oh, no!"
"To whom then?"
"To the hidden force that directs all things."
"I am your destiny."
"Ah, Desmond--or Morocco. I feel to-day as if I shall never see England
again, or a civilised audience such as I have known."
And then she seemed to fall into a waking dream. Even Renfrew felt
drowsy, the air was so intensely hot and the motion of the horses so
monotonous. And Mohammed's deep voice was never silent. It buzzed like a
bourdon in the glare of the noontide, till, far away on the hill-side,
they saw white Tetuan facing the plain, the river moving stagnantly
towards the sea, the great fields of corn in which strange flowers grew,
and the giant range of shaggy mountains, swimming in a mist of gold that
looked like spangled tissue.