said, with a cold pride. "It is that which civilisation worships in
me, that which has set me above the other women of my time. It is even
that which has made you love me, Desmond, whether you know it or not."

He looked at her like a man half dazed.

"I frighten the dove-cotes. I can make men tremble by my outbursts of
passion, and women faint because I am sad; and even the stony-hearted
sob when I die. And I can make you love me, Desmond. Yes, perhaps I am
more barbarous than other women. But do you think I am sorry for it?
No."

"Some day you may be, Claire."

He spoke more gently. The wonder and worship he had for this woman
stirred in him again. While she had been speaking, she had instinctively
risen to her feet, and she stood in the dull red glow of the waning
fire, looking down at him as if he were a creature in a lower world than
the one in which she could walk at will.

"I shall never choose to be sorry," she said, "whatever my fate may be.
To be sorry is to be feeble, and to be feeble is to be unfit to live,
and unfit to die. Never, never think of me as being sorry for anything I
have done, or may do. Never deceive yourself about me."

A great log, eaten through by a flame at its heart, broke gently asunder
on the summit of the heaped wood. One half of it, red-hot, and alive
with multitudes of flickering fires, gold, primrose, steel-blue, and
deep purple, dropped and fell at Claire's feet. She glanced down at it,
and at Renfrew.

"My deeds may burn me up," she said, "as those coloured fires burn up
that wood, until it is no longer wood but fire itself. They shall never
drench me with wretched, contemptible tears."

He got up; and, when he was on his feet, he seemed to hear the incessant
music more clearly, blending with the words of Claire. The notes were
like hot sparks falling on him. He winced under them, and looked round
almost wildly. Then, without speaking, he hurried away in the darkness
to the place where the soldiers were feasting, and the men of the camp
were holding their fantasia. Claire divined why he went. She started a
step forward as if to try and stop him; but his movement had been so
abrupt that she was too late. She had to let him go. Her hands fell at
her sides, and she waited by the dying fire in the attitude of one who
listens intently. The soft melody of that hidden and persistent musician
wailed in her ears, on and on. It came again and again, never ceasing,
never altering in