He had suddenly become aware that the Moor's melody added something to his torment. At his last exclamation, the sullen look in Claire's pale face gave way to an expression of fear and of startling solicitude.
“Desmond, you are putting a wrong interpretation on what I said,” she began hastily.
But he was excited, and could not endure any interruption.
“And you imply a degrading immorality as a prevailing characteristic of women too,” he went on, “that they should leave their homes, deny their obligations, because they find elsewhere—away, out in some dark place with a blackguard—a powerful will to curb them and keep them down, like—why, like these wretched women all round us here in this country,—the women we saw in Tetuan only to-day, veiled, hidden, loaded with burdens, worse off than animals, because their masters doubt them, and would not dream of trusting them. Claire, there's something barbarous about you.”
He spoke the words with the intonation of one who thinks he is uttering an insult. But she smiled.
“It's the something barbarous about me that has placed me where I am,” she said, with a cold pride. “It is that which civilisation worships in me, that which has set me above the other women of my time. It is even that which has made you love me, Desmond, whether you know it or not.”
He looked at her like a man half dazed.
“I frighten the dove-cotes. I can make men tremble by my outbursts of passion, and women faint because I am sad; and even the stony-hearted sob when I die. And I can make you love me, Desmond. Yes, perhaps I am more barbarous than other women. But do you think I am sorry for it? No.”
“Some day you may be, Claire.”