e who had come so close to
her, who had broken her reverie. Acting upon the sudden impulse, she
turned swiftly and came on into the darkness. Almost instantly she stood
before the dim outline of a man, and paused. Here in the night it was
very lonely, even though the illuminated camp was so near. Claire
hesitated to approach this man who seemed to be on watch and who was
perfectly motionless. She waited a moment, wishing that he would come to
her in order that she might see what he was like, whether he carried a
gun and was a soldier. But it was soon evident that he did not mean to
move. Then Claire went up so close to him that his coarse garment rubbed
against her djelabe and his eyes stared right down into hers. And she
saw that it was the snake-charmer from the Soko, who was looking into
her face with the very smile of the man in her dream. Round his bare
throat one of his snakes was twined, and he held its neck between the
fingers of his left hand. The wind tossed his short and ragged cloak
wildly to and fro, and whirled the long lock of hair at the back of his
shaven head about, and made it dance like a living thing. When Claire
came up to him, he never said a word, or moved at all. It seemed to her
that his face was that of some dark and triumphant being, waiting
immovably for something that was certain to come to him, and to come so
close that he need not even stretch out his hand to take it as his
possession. What was the thing he waited for? She looked at his black
face and at the snake which moved slowly, trying to thrust its way
downward into the warmth of his bosom, out of the reach of the wind and
of the night. And, when the man's fingers unclosed to release it, and it
slid away and softly disappeared beneath his garment, Claire shuddered
under the influence of a sensation that was surely mad. For she felt
that she envied the snake, and that the charmer was waiting there in the
darkness for her. As the snake vanished, Claire recoiled towards the
fire. The charmer did not attempt to follow her, and his huge and
watchful figure quickly faded from Claire's eyes till his blackness had
become one with the blackness of the night.

IV

Renfrew, as he crouched before the fire, felt a light touch on his
shoulder. He looked up, saw Claire's white face peering down on him, and
sprang to his feet.

"I thought you were never coming, that you had deserted me altogether,
and left me lonely in the midst of the fantasi