Part 7 (1/2)
”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.”
”It was curious, coming just before we saw the fellow. And you say the two men were alike.”
”I did not say alike. I said the same.”
”How could that be?”
”How can a thousand things be? Yet we cannot deny them when they are, any more than we can deny that we feel an earthly immortality within us and yet crumble into dust. In sleep I saw that man. I saw his snake. I heard him play.”
”Yes, Claire, I know. It's d.a.m.ned strange.”
Renfrew's forehead was wrinkled in a meditative frown.
”But, after all, what's a dream?” he exclaimed. ”A vagary of a sleeping brain. And in your dream you wouldn't go to that beggar, Claire.”
”No. I wouldn't go, and so I died.”
”It all means nothing--nothing at all.”
She looked at him gravely.