“Well, but, Claire, how did you know that?”
She looked at him with a sort of dull amusement and pity in her half-shut eyes.
“Shall I tell you?”
“Yes.”
“I knew it, because the tune charmed me, Desmond.”
“Ah, you are acting! I half suspected it from the first,” Renfrew exclaimed almost roughly.
He sat up as a man who has been lying under a spell stirs when the spell is broken. Now he knew that his pipe was out, and he felt for his match-box. But Claire still kept her eyes fixed on him, and laid her hand on his arm gently.
“No, I am not acting,” she said. “The tune charmed me. You see I am a woman; and there are many women who feel at moments that what attracts some special creature, thing, of the so-called world without a soul, attracts them too. Some men can whistle a woman as they would a dog, can't they?”
“Perhaps.”
“Yes, and some men can charm a woman as they could charm a serpent.”