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?" Renfrew's face was scarlet. He put up his hand before it and muttered:-- "This fire's scorching. Yes, Claire, of savages. Didn't you find that out this afternoon, when we were in Tetuan? But of course you couldn't. You couldn't know you'd married such an infernal lunatic." He broke off. She was watching him with a close attention, and her body had ceased to tremble under his arm. "Go on, Desmond." "You want me to tell you the sort of man you've married?" "I want you to tell me what you mean." "Then I will. Claire, this afternoon I took you away from that snake-charming chap because--well, because you watched him as if he fascinated you." "Oh!" "Of course I knew why. His performance was clever, and he was picturesque in his way, although, to be sure, it was all put on, as far as that goes." "Like my stage performances, Desmond." "Claire," he said hotly. "How can you?" "That man acts far better than I do--if he acts at all." "Was that why he interested you so much?" "In what other way could he interest me?" Renfrew kicked at one of the blazing logs and sent up a shower of red-hot flakes. "Well, there was your dream, Claire." "Yes, there was that."