“I mean that I slept last night, and that I wish I hadn't.”
She turned her great eyes on Renfrew, holding the red, green, and yellow fan so that it concealed the lower part of her face. And he looked at her, staring at him like some tragic stranger above the rampart of an unknown city, and wondered whether she was acting to him in the sun. On the forefinger of the hand that held up the fan a huge black pearl perched in a circle of gold. Renfrew had often noticed it on the stage, when Claire lifted the silver dagger to kill the man who loved her in the play.
“The door of your tent was securely closed when I got up and came out this morning,” he said.
“Oh, yes.”
She spoke with the utmost indifference. Then she added more sharply:—
“Desmond, has it ever occurred to you that I am serpentine?”
He was startled and made no answer.
“Well—has it?”
“Yes,” he said truthfully.