even that sort of interest was dying out when, looking to his left, he
saw the accustomed shapes of the other bungalows looming in the night,
and remembered the arrival of the thirsty company in the boat. Wang
would hardly risk such a crime in the presence of other white men. It
was a peculiar instance of the "safety in numbers," principle, which
somehow was not much to Heyst's taste.

He went in gloomily, and stood over the empty drawer in deep and
unsatisfactory thought. He had just made up his mind that he must
breathe nothing of this to the girl, when he heard her voice behind him.
She had taken him by surprise, but he resisted the impulse to turn round
at once under the impression that she might read his trouble in his
face. Yes, she had taken him by surprise, and for that reason the
conversation which began was not exactly as he would have conducted it
if he had been prepared for her pointblank question. He ought to have
said at once: "I've missed nothing." It was a deplorable thing that he
should have let it come so far as to have her ask what it was he missed.
He closed the conversation by saying lightly:

"It's an object of very small value. Don't worry about it--it isn't
worth while. The best you can do is to go and lie down again, Lena."

Reluctant she turned away, and only in the doorway asked: "And you?"

"I think I shall smoke a cheroot on the veranda. I don't feel sleepy for
the moment."

"Well, don't be long."

He made no answer. She saw him standing there, very still, with a frown
on his brow, and slowly dropped the curtain.

Heyst did really light a cheroot before going out again on the veranda.
He glanced up from under the low eaves, to see by the stars how the
night went on. It was going very slowly. Why it should have irked him he
did not know, for he had nothing to expect from the dawn; but everything
round him had become unreasonable, unsettled, and vaguely urgent, laying
him under an obligation, but giving him no line of action. He felt
contemptuously irritated with the situation. The outer world had broken
upon him; and he did not know what wrong he had done to bring this on
himself, any more than he knew what he had done to provoke the horrible
calumny about his treatment of poor Morrison. For he could not forget
this. It had reached the ears of one who needed to have the most perfect
confidence in the rectitude of his conduct.

"And she only half disbelieves it," he thought, with hop