ntly
towards the sea, the great fields of corn in which strange flowers grew,
and the giant range of shaggy mountains, swimming in a mist of gold that
looked like spangled tissue.

III

The camp was pitched beyond the city in the green plain that lies
between Tetuan and the sea. From the tents Renfrew and Claire saw the
trains of camels and donkeys passing slowly along the high road towards
the steep and stony hill that leads up to the lower city gate, the
white-washed summer palaces of the wealthy Moors, nestling in gardens,
among green fields and groves of acacias, olives and almond trees, the
far-off line of blue water on the one hand and the fairy-like and ivory
town upon the other. Clouds of brown dust flew up in the air, and the
hoarse cry of "Balak! Balak!" made a perpetual and distant music. Far
more strange and barbarous was this city than Tangier. All traces of
Europe had faded away. Thousands of years seemed now to stand like a
wall between the Continents, and the hordes of dark and fanatical
Moslems gazed upon the great actress and her husband as we gaze at wild
animals whose aspects and whose habits are strange to us.

"I know now what it is to feel like an unclean dog," Claire said, as
they sat at dinner under the stars that night, after their halting
progress through the filthy alleys of the white fairyland on the
hill-side. "It is a grand sensation. I suppose children enjoy it, too.
That must be why they like making mud-pies."

"To-morrow is market-day, Absalem tells me," Renfrew said. "We will
spend it in the town, and you can feel unclean to your heart's
content--you!"

He looked at her and laughed low, with the pride of a lover in a
beautiful woman who is his own.

"They ought to fall down and worship you," he said.

"Moors worship a woman! Desmond, you are mad!"

"No, they are--they are. See, Claire, the moon is coming up already. Can
it be shining on Piccadilly too, and on the facade of the theatre?"

"The theatre! I can't believe I shall ever see it again."

"Nonsense!"

"Is it? This wild country seems to have swallowed me up, and I don't
feel as if it will ever disgorge me again. Desmond, perhaps there are
some lands that certain people ought never to visit. For those lands
love them, and, once they have seized their prey, they will never yield
it up again. Poor men must often feel that when they are dying in
foreign places. It is the land which has taken them to itself as an
octo