hem!" she answered. "If London
husbands--" She stopped. "No don't let us think of London. And yet I
suppose you loved it in that little house of yours?"

"I think I did."

"Don't you ever regret that little house?"

She saw his eyebrows move downward.

"Oh, I--I'm very fond of Djenan-el-Maqui."

"And no wonder! Only you seemed so much a part of your London home. You
seemed to belong to it. There was an odd little sense of mystery."

"Was there?"

"And I felt it was necessary to you, to your talent. How could I feel
that without ever hearing your music? I did."

"Don't I seem to belong to Djenan-el-Maqui?"

"I've never seen you there," she answered, with a deliberate
evasiveness.

Claude looked at her for a moment, then looked away over the immense
view. It seemed to him that this woman was beginning to understand him
too well, perhaps.

"Of course," she added. "There is a sense of mystery in an Arab house.
But it's such a different kind. And I think we each have our own
particular brand of mystery. Now yours was a very special brand, quite
unlike anyone else's."

"I certainly got to love my little house."

"Because it was doing things for you."

Claude looked at her again, and thought how intelligent her eyes were.
As he looked at them they seemed to grow more intelligent--as if in
answer to his gaze.

"Right things," she added, with an emphasis on the penultimate word.

"But--forgive me--how can you know?"

"I do know. I'm an ignoramus with marvellous instincts in certain
directions. That's why a lot of people--silly people, you think, I
daresay--follow my lead."

"Well, but--"

"Go on!"

"I think I'd better not."

"You can say anything to me. I'm never in a hurry to take offense."

"I was going to say that you seemed rather to wish once to draw me out
of my shell into a very different kind of life," said Claude slowly,
hesitatingly, and slightly reddening.

"I acted quite against my artistic instinct when I did that."

"Why?"

Mrs. Shiffney looked at him in silence for a moment. She was wishing to
blush. But that was an effort beyond her powers.

Very far away behind them a clarion sounded.

"The soldiers must be going back to barracks, I suppose," she said.

Claude was feeling treacherous, absurdly. The thought of Charmian had
come to him, and with it the disagreeable, almost hateful sensation.

"Yes, I suppose they are," he said coldly.

He did not mean to speak coldly; but d