“The theatre! I can't believe I shall ever see it again.”
“Nonsense!”
“Is it? This wild country seems to have swallowed me up, and I don't feel as if it will ever disgorge me again. Desmond, perhaps there are some lands that certain people ought never to visit. For those lands love them, and, once they have seized their prey, they will never yield it up again. Poor men must often feel that when they are dying in foreign places. It is the land which has taken them to itself as an octopus takes a drifting boat in a lonely sea. Africa!”
She had risen from her seat and moved out into the vague plain. Renfrew followed her.
“I wonder in which direction the desert lies nearest,” she said. “All the strange people come in from the desert, as the strange things of life come in from the future, only one so seldom hears the tinkling bells of those deadly silent caravans in which they travel. If we could hear and see them coming, what emotions we should have!”
“There are premonitions, some men say,” Renfrew answered.
“The faint bells of the caravans ringing,—do you ever hear them?”
“No, Claire—never. And you?”
“I half thought I did once.”
“When was that?”