III
The camp was pitched beyond the city in the green plain that lies between Tetuan and the sea. From the tents Renfrew and Claire saw the trains of camels and donkeys passing slowly along the high road towards the steep and stony hill that leads up to the lower city gate, the white-washed summer palaces of the wealthy Moors, nestling in gardens, among green fields and groves of acacias, olives and almond trees, the far-off line of blue water on the one hand and the fairy-like and ivory town upon the other. Clouds of brown dust flew up in the air, and the hoarse cry of “Balak! Balak!” made a perpetual and distant music. Far more strange and barbarous was this city than Tangier. All traces of Europe had faded away. Thousands of years seemed now to stand like a wall between the Continents, and the hordes of dark and fanatical Moslems gazed upon the great actress and her husband as we gaze at wild animals whose aspects and whose habits are strange to us.
“I know now what it is to feel like an unclean dog,” Claire said, as they sat at dinner under the stars that night, after their halting progress through the filthy alleys of the white fairyland on the hill-side. “It is a grand sensation. I suppose children enjoy it, too. That must be why they like making mud-pies.”
“To-morrow is market-day, Absalem tells me,” Renfrew said. “We will spend it in the town, and you can feel unclean to your heart's content—you!”
He looked at her and laughed low, with the pride of a lover in a beautiful woman who is his own.
“They ought to fall down and worship you,” he said.
“Moors worship a woman! Desmond, you are mad!”
“No, they are—they are. See, Claire, the moon is coming up already. Can it be shining on Piccadilly too, and on the façade of the theatre?”