"It's perfect here," she said, sitting down. "And what a view!"
They were exactly opposite to the terrific Grand Rocher, a gray and pale yellow precipice, with the cascades and the Grand Moulin at its foot, the last houses of the city perched upon its summit in the sky.
"And to think that women have been flung from there!" said Claude, clasping his hands round his knees.
"Unfaithful women! Rather hard on them!" she answered. "If London husbands--" She stopped. "No don't let us think of London. And yet I suppose you loved it in that little house of yours?"
"Don't you ever regret that little house?"
"Oh, I--I'm very fond of Djenan-el-Maqui."
"And no wonder! Only you seemed so much a part of your London home. You seemed to belong to it. There was an odd little sense of mystery."
"And I felt it was necessary to you, to your talent. How could I feel that without ever hearing your music? I did."
"Don't I seem to belong to Djenan-el-Maqui?"
"I've never seen you there," she answered, with a deliberate evasiveness.
Claude looked at her for a moment, then looked away over the immense view. It seemed to him that this woman was beginning to understand him too well, perhaps.
"Of course," she added. "There is a sense of mystery in an Arab house. But it's such a different kind. And I think we each have our own particular brand of mystery. Now yours was a very special brand, quite unlike anyone else's."
"I certainly got to love my little house."
Claude looked at her again, and thought how intelligent her eyes were. As he looked at them they seemed to grow more intelligent--as if in answer to his gaze.
"Right things," she added, with an emphasis on the penultimate word.
"I do know. I'm an ignoramus with marvellous instincts in certain directions. That's why a lot of people--silly people, you think, I daresay--follow my lead."
"You can say anything to me. I'm never in a hurry to take offense."
"I was going to say that you seemed rather to wish once to draw me out of my shell into a very different kind of life," said Claude slowly, hesitatingly, and slightly reddening.
"I acted quite against my artistic instinct when I did that."
Mrs. Shiffney looked at him in silence for a moment. She was wishing to blush. But that was an effort beyond her powers.