linen in the
French embroidery of which stuck a needle, tokened a woman's presence.
By screen and veranda the blinding sunshine was subdued to a cool, dim
radiance. The sheen of pearl push-buttons caught Grief's eye.

"Storage batteries, by George, run by the windmill!" he exclaimed as he
pressed the buttons. "And concealed lighting!"

Hidden bowls glowed, and the room was filled with diffused golden light.
Many shelves of books lined the walls. Grief fell to running over
their titles. A fairly well-read man himself, for a sea-adventurer, he
glimpsed a wide-ness of range and catholicity of taste that were beyond
him. Old friends he met, and others that he had heard of but never read.
There were complete sets of Tolstoy, Turgenieff, and Gorky; of Cooper
and Mark Twain; of Hugo, and Zola, and Sue; and of Flaubert, De
Maupassant, and Paul de Koch. He glanced curiously at the pages of
Metchnikoff, Weininger, and Schopenhauer, and wonderingly at those
of Ellis, Lydston, Krafft-Ebbing, and Forel. Woodruff's "Expansion of
Races" was in his hands when Snow returned from further exploration of
the house.

"Enamelled bath-tub, separate room for a shower, and a sitz-bath!" he
exclaimed. "Fitted up for a king! And I reckon some of my money went to
pay for it. The place must be occupied. I found fresh-opened butter and
milk tins in the pantry, and fresh turtle-meat hanging up. I'm going to
see what else I can find."

Grief, too, departed, through a door that led out of the opposite end
of the living-room. He found himself in a self-evident woman's bedroom.
Across it, he peered through a wire-mesh door into a screened and
darkened sleeping porch. On a couch lay a woman asleep. In the soft
light she seemed remarkably beautiful in a dark Spanish way. By her
side, opened and face downward, a novel lay on a chair. From the
colour in her cheeks, Grief concluded that she had not been long in the
tropics. After the one glimpse he stole softly back, in time to see Snow
entering the living-room through the other door. By the naked arm he was
clutching an age-wrinkled black who grinned in fear and made signs of
dumbness.

"I found him snoozing in a little kennel out back," the mate said. "He's
the cook, I suppose. Can't get a word out of him. What did you find?"

"A sleeping princess. S-sh! There's somebody now."

"If it's Hall," Snow muttered, clenching his fist.

Grief shook his head. "No rough-house. There's a woman here. And if it