s
hands.

* * * * *

With daylight the camp was in a turmoil. Claire was gone. Her bed had
not been slept in. She had not undressed. She had not even taken off
Absalem's djelabe. At least it could not be found. Renfrew, frantic,
almost mad with anxiety, explored the plain, rode at a gallop to the
gate of the city, called upon the Governor of Tetuan to help him in his
search, and summoned the Consul to his aid in his despair. Every effort
was made to find the missing woman; but no success crowned the quest,
either at that time, or afterwards, when weeks became months, and months
grew into years. A great actress was lost to the world. His world was
lost to Renfrew. He rode back at last one day to the villas of Tangier,
bent down upon his horse, broken, alone. In his despair he cursed
himself. He accused himself of cruelty to Claire that night beside the
African fire, when he had been roused to a momentary anger against her.
He even told himself that he had driven her away from him. But other
men, who had known Claire and the strangeness of her caprices, said to
each other that she had got tired of Renfrew and given him the slip,
wandering away disguised in the djelabe of a Moor, and that some fine
day she would turn up again, and re-appear upon the stage that had seen
her glory.

Later on, when Renfrew at last, after long searching, came hopelessly
back to England, so changed that his friends scarcely recognised him, he
was sometimes seized with strange and terrible thoughts as he sat
brooding over the wreck of his love. He seemed to see, as in a pale
vision of flame and darkness, a little dusky Moorish boy bending to
smell at a withered sprig of orange flower, and to remember that
once--how long ago it seemed--Claire had wished to kiss that boy as a
Moorish woman might have kissed him. And then he saw a veiled figure,
that he seemed to know even in its deceitful robe, bend down to the boy.
And the vision faded. At another time he would hear the little tune that
had persecuted him in the night. And then he recalled the music of
Claire's dream, and the melody that charmed the snakes; and he
shuddered. For the miracle man had never been seen in Tetuan since the
day when Claire had watched him in the Soko. Nor could Renfrew ever find
out whither he had wandered.

* * * * *

Very long afterwards, however,--although this fact was never known to
Renfrew,--two