Renfrew, as he crouched before the fire, felt a light touch on his
shoulder. He looked up, saw Claire's white face peering down on him, and
sprang to his feet.
"I thought you were never coming, that you had deserted me altogether,
and left me lonely in the midst of the fantasia," he cried, seizing her
hands.
"I am cold," she said; "horribly cold. Let me sit beside you, close to
the fire."
She sat down on the ground, almost touching the roaring flames.
"Where have you been?"
"Sitting in the dark. The soldiers are feasting?"
"Yes, and the camp fellows are all singing and playing. Don't you hear
them? We are quite alone. That's all I want, all I care for. Claire,
when you go away like this, and leave me, even for a few minutes,
Morocco is the most desolate place in all the world, and I'm the most
desolate vagabond in it."
He put his arm round her. The terrific glow from the fire played over
her face, danced in the deep folds of her djelabe, shone in her eyes,
showered a cloud of gold and red about her hair. For she had let her
hood fall down on her shoulders. She attained to that fine and almost
demoniacal picturesqueness which glorifies even the most commonplace
smith when you see him in his forge by night. Her cheeks were suffused
with scarlet, as if she had suddenly painted them to go on the stage.
Yet she shivered again as Renfrew spoke.
"You should not have left the fire," he said. "And yet the wind is
warm."
"It can't be. But it's not the wind, it's the darkness that has chilled
me."
"Or is it the loneliness?" he asked, tenderly. "For you have been alone
as well as I, and nothing on earth makes one so cold as solitude."
"I scarcely ever feel alone, Desmond," she said.
And, as she spoke, she cast a glance behind her into the darkness from
which she had just come. Renfrew noticed it.
"You have been alone?" he asked hastily. Then he checked himself with an
ashamed laugh.
"What a fool I am," he exclaimed.
He clasped her more closely.
"A fool, because I'm so desperately in love with you, Claire," he said,
rushing on his confession with the swiftness of alarmed bravery. "Look
here, I want to tell you something. You must put everything I do,
everything I am, down to the account of my love,--shyness, anger,
abruptness, violence,--everything, Claire. My love's responsible. It
does play the devil with an ordinary man when he's given his very soul
to--to a woman like you, to a great woman. It keeps him back when he
ought to go on, and sends him on when he ought to stay quiet, and makes
him jealous of stones and--and savages."
"Savages, Desmond?"