“I am cold,” she said; “horribly cold. Let me sit beside you, close to the fire.”
She sat down on the ground, almost touching the roaring flames.
“Where have you been?”
“Sitting in the dark. The soldiers are feasting?”
“Yes, and the camp fellows are all singing and playing. Don't you hear them? We are quite alone. That's all I want, all I care for. Claire, when you go away like this, and leave me, even for a few minutes, Morocco is the most desolate place in all the world, and I'm the most desolate vagabond in it.”
He put his arm round her. The terrific glow from the fire played over her face, danced in the deep folds of her djelabe, shone in her eyes, showered a cloud of gold and red about her hair. For she had let her hood fall down on her shoulders. She attained to that fine and almost demoniacal picturesqueness which glorifies even the most commonplace smith when you see him in his forge by night. Her cheeks were suffused with scarlet, as if she had suddenly painted them to go on the stage. Yet she shivered again as Renfrew spoke.
“You should not have left the fire,” he said. “And yet the wind is warm.”
“It can't be. But it's not the wind, it's the darkness that has chilled me.”
“Or is it the loneliness?” he asked, tenderly. “For you have been alone as well as I, and nothing on earth makes one so cold as solitude.”