His eyes travelled beyond the gorge, the precipices, the tree-tops, beyond the hard white track far down beneath his feet, to the open country, bare, splendid, almost incredibly spacious, fiercely blooming in the strong colors--reds, yellows, golds--with long rolling slopes, dimpling shallow depressions, snakelike roads, visible surely for hundreds of kilometers, far-off ranges of solemn mountains whose crests seemed to hint at divinity. And as he looked he felt that he wanted, or perhaps needed, something that he had certainly never had, that must exist, that must have been, be, known to some few men and women; only that something experienced made life truly life. For a moment, in some mysterious process of the mind, Claude mingled his companion with the dream and the longing, transfigured, standing for women rather than a woman. During that moment Mrs. Shiffney watched him, and London desires connected with him returned to her, were very strong within her. She had come to him as a spy from an enemy's camp. She had fulfilled her mission. Any further action must be taken by Henriette--was, perhaps, at this very moment being taken by her. But if this man had been different she might well have been on his side. Even now-- Claude felt her eyes upon him and looked at her. And now she deliberately allowed him to see her thought, her desire. What did it matter if he was married? What on earth had such a commonplace matter as marriage got to do with it? Her look, not to be misunderstood, brought Claude at once back to that firm ground on which he walked with Charmian and his own instinctive loyalty; an austere rubbish in Mrs. Shiffney's consideration of it. He unclasped his hands from his knees. At that moment he saw the minotaur thing, with its teeth and claws, heard the shuddering voice of it. He wanted to look away at once from Mrs. Shiffney, but he could not. All that he could do was to try not to show by his eyes that he understood her desire and was recoiling from it. Of course, he failed, as any other man must have failed. She followed every step of his retreat, and sarcasm flickered into her face, transforming it. "Don't you think I understand you?" she said lightly. "Don't you think you ought to have lived on in Mullion House?" As she spoke she got up and gently brushed some twigs from her tailor-made skirt. Claude sprang up, hoping to be helped by movement. "Oh, no, I had had quite enough of it!" he replied, forcing himself to seem careless, yet conscious that little of what he was feeling was unknown by her at this moment. "And your opera could never have been brought to the birth there." She had turned, and they walked slowly back among the fir-trees toward the bridge. "You knew that, perhaps, and were wise in your generation." Claude said nothing, and she continued: