"I know. But I would not go. I determined that I would not, and I lay perfectly still. But all the time I longed to go. I had an almost irresistible passion for movement towards that tune. It seemed to me a stream of music into which I yearned to plunge, and drown and die. And it flowed up there at the man's lips! The longing increased as he piped the tune, over and over and over again, almost under his breath. I was sick with it, and it hurt me because I resisted it. And at last I knew that resisting it would kill me. I must either go, or not go, and die. There was no alternative. That music simply claimed me. It had the right to. And if I denied that right I should cease. I did deny it." She shuddered in the sun, then added, almost harshly:-- "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."