In their most reputable hotel 'Le Coeur d'Or,' long since remodelled and
renamed, Mrs. Ercott lay in her brass-bound bed looking by starlight at
the Colonel in his brass-bound bed. Her ears were carefully freed from
the pressure of her pillow, for she thought she heard a mosquito.
Companion for thirty years to one whose life had been feverishly
punctuated by the attentions of those little beasts, she had no love for
them. It was the one subject on which perhaps her imagination was
stronger than her common sense. For in fact there was not, and could not
be, a mosquito, since the first thing the Colonel did, on arriving at any
place farther South than Parallel 46 of latitude, was to open the windows
very wide, and nail with many tiny tacks a piece of mosquito netting
across that refreshing space, while she held him firmly by the
coat-tails. The fact that other people did not so secure their windows
did not at all trouble the Colonel, a true Englishman, who loved to act
in his own way, and to think in the ways of other people. After that
they would wait till night came, then burn a peculiar little lamp with a
peculiar little smell, and, in the full glare of the gaslight, stand
about on chairs, with slippers, and their eyes fixed on true or imaginary
beasts. Then would fall little slaps, making little messes, and little
joyous or doleful cries would arise: "I've got that one!" "Oh, John, I
missed him!" And in the middle of the room, the Colonel, in pyjamas, and
spectacles (only worn in very solemn moments, low down on his nose),
would revolve slowly, turning his eyes, with that look in them of
out-facing death which he had so long acquired, on every inch of wall and
ceiling, till at last he would say: "Well, Dolly, that's the lot!" At
which she would say: "Give me a kiss, dear!" and he would kiss her, and
get into his bed.

There was, then, no mosquito, save that general ghost of him which
lingered in the mind of one devoted to her husband. Spying out his
profile, for he was lying on his back, she refrained from saying: "John,
are you awake?" A whiffling sound was coming from a nose, to
which--originally straight--attention to military duties had given a
slight crook, half an inch below the level of grizzled eyebrows raised a
little, as though surprised at the sounds beneath. She could hardly see
him, but she thought: "How good he looks!" And, in fact, he did. It was
the face of a man incapable of evil, havin