aside.

Renfrew, uneasy, and wondering what conduct on his part would best suit
her mysterious mood, after one or two remarks to which she barely
replied, drew away a little, and gave his attention to the antics of the
soldiers. Some of them were already resuming their djelabes, in
preparation for the feast, which they sniffed even through the odour of
burning wood and leaves. The cook, after his emotional and acrobatic
outburst, had returned to his pans, which he was stirring tenderly with
a stick. When Renfrew again looked towards Claire, he found it
impossible to tell which cloak shrouded her from his sight. Four or five
hooded figures stood near the fire. She must be one of them. He
approached the group, but found, to his surprise, that all the members
of it were soldiers. Claire had moved away. Renfrew stood for a few
minutes with the men, till they were summoned to their feast, which,
strangely enough, was to take place away from the fire in the dense
darkness behind the tents. Then he was left alone by the huge mass of
flame, which roared hoarsely in the wind. Where could Claire be? On any
ordinary occasion Renfrew would certainly have sought for her, but
to-night something held him back. He knew very well that she wished to
be alone, that something was closely occupying her mind. Whether she was
still brooding over the event of the afternoon, when he had forcibly led
her away in the very crisis of the snake-charmer's performance, he could
not tell. To an ordinary woman such a matter would have been a trifle;
but Renfrew understood that Claire felt it more deeply. Her mind
appeared to be mysteriously moved and awakened by this savage from the
depths of Morocco. Various circumstances combined to render him more
interesting to her than he could possibly be to any ordinary traveller.
Renfrew recognised that fully and quietly. The genius of Claire had
enabled her to realise in London all the wildly picturesque
idiosyncrasies of a man whom she had never seen or heard of. Suddenly
fate had led her to him, and she had beheld her own performance, the
original of her imitation. As Renfrew stood by the fire, he began to
feel the folly of his proceeding of the afternoon, and to imagine more
clearly than before the condition into which it had thrown Claire. It is
a sin to disturb the contemplations of genius. It is sacrilege. And then
Renfrew had been moved to his act by a preposterous access of jealousy.
He acknowledged th