ng soldiers, and stole away out of the
illuminated circle formed by the glow from the fire, into the night
beyond. She did not go far, only into the nearest shadow. And there she
sat down on the short dry grass, and forgot Renfrew, the roaring flames,
the wind that felt incessantly at her robe, the shouting guard, the
radiant and dancing attendants. She forgot them all as completely as if
they had never been in her life; for the strangeness of certain
incidents preoccupied her, to the exclusion of everything else. In the
double existence of a really great actress there are many moments in
which the truths of the imagination seem more important than the truths
of physical phenomena of things seen by the eye, of sounds received and
appreciated by the ear. In these moments, genius usurps the throne of
reason, and the mind beholds fancies as sunlit gods, facts as timid and
scarcely defined shadows. So it was with Claire now. Even the
snake-charmer, as he gave his performance in the Soko, was a shadow in
comparison with that man who summoned her to the tent door in the
solitary encampment. And behind and beyond both these figures of truth
and dreaming stood a third, created for herself by Claire in London,
that figure into whom she had poured her soul as into a mould, when she
charmed imaginary serpents, and prayed to the god in whom, for a moment,
she believed with the passion of the perfect mime. This trio Claire
placed in line, and reviewed: charmer of her imagination, of her dream,
of the Soko.

They were the same, and yet not the same. For the first was dominated,
even was created by her. The second stood above her, like some magician,
and summoned her as one possessing a right. The third--what of him? He
was a wild creature of blood and foam, crafty, a player like herself, a
maker of money, a savage in sacking, and almost nothing to her now. Out
of the desert he came. Into the desert he was, perhaps, even now,
returning, with his snakes sleeping in his bosom, and the money of the
Tetuan Moors jingling in his pouch.

Yes, she saw him, travelling like a shadow in the night, one of those
grotesques which leap on bedroom walls when a lamp flares in the wind
that sighs through an open casement. He was going; but the man of the
dream remained. The dream man had come up out of the world that is
vaguer to us than the desert when we wake, and clearer to us than the
desert when we sleep. Claire saw him still, and, while the won