I don't think Farrar's character isn't interested in women. He continually pokes fun at the nuns' sexuality ... in fact HE's the Hermes/Trickster in this one, who questions everything and upsets the balance, introducing the siren princess for example. (P&B LOVED those mischievous characters, making them CENTRAL rather than sidekicks or light entertainment as they usually were in Hollywood treatments.) But, as he continually hints, when discussing the holy man ("What would Christ have done?") up the hill, or when talking to the nuns about religion, he's just not into institutionalised exploitations, but he HAS got a sincere belief pattern underneath. Farrar is 'one of nature's gentlemen' who shocks the nuns regularly with a morality that is sometimes superior to theirs. That's Hermes.

Farrar just didn't want to exploit a totally psychotic girl, preferring the Kerr type with stabler character, he comes to value ... 'singer not song'.. The tragedy of the scarlet lady here is that she carries the earthier shadows of the nuns, the shadows that THEY repress. He's a 'desert loving Englishman'... as Alec Guinness would say as Feisal. WWI made lots of them, scattered all over the globe in revolutionary disillusionment.