cious, like a twisted tangled creature that has the smile of a
sweet woman, or the eyes of an alluring child. In its plaintiveness
there was the atmosphere of solitary places. And there was a sound of
love in it, too, but of a love so uncivilised as to be almost monstrous.
Some earth man of a dead age might have sung it to his mate in a land
where the sun looked down on things primeval. It might have caught the
heart of maidens very long ago, before they learned to think of passion
as the twin of law, and to regard a kiss as the seal set upon the tape
of matrimony. The queer sorrow of it could hardly have moved any eyes to
tears. Yet few women could have heard it without a sense of desolation.
It ran through the darkness as cold water runs in the black shadow of a
forest, a trickle of sound as thin and persistent as the cry of a wild
creature in the night.

Renfrew thrilled under the touch of Claire's hand.

"You can give me the strength every woman seeks in the man she yields
herself up to," he said.

"How?"

"By loving me."

"Ah, yes. But the strength must not come, however subtly, from the
woman. No--no."

Again she leaned away from him, with her face turned towards the
darkness. Tremors ran through her, and her hands dropped almost feebly
from Renfrew's shoulders, as the hands of an invalid fall away, and
down, after an embrace.

"Oh, no," she reiterated, and her voice was almost a wail. "It must be
there, in the man, part of him, whether he is with the woman in the
night, or alone--far off--in the jungle, or in the--the desert. He must
have the strange strength that comes from solitude. Where can the men of
our country find that now?"

"They find strength in the clash of wills, Claire, and in the battles of
love."

"Most of them never find it at all," she said, with a sort of sullen
resignation. "And most of the women do not want it, or ask for it, or
know what it is. The danger is when some accident or some fate teaches
them what it is. Then--then--"

She stopped, and glanced at Renfrew suspiciously, as if she had so
nearly betrayed a secret that he might, nay, must have guessed it.

"What do you mean? Then they seek it away from--?"

"Where they know they will find it," she said, almost defiantly.

Renfrew's face grew cold and rigid.

"What are you saying to me, Claire?"

"What is true of some women, Desmond."

He was silent. Pain and fear invaded his heart; and, by degrees, the
little tune