her returning to her seat. He beckoned to her, and she continued to
move, crossing the shady room, pure and bright in her white dress, her
hair loose, with something of a sleep-walker in her unhurried motion, in
her extended hand, in the sightless effect of her grey eyes luminous in
the half-light. He had never seen such an expression in her face
before. It had dreaminess in it, intense attention, and something like
sternness. Arrested in the doorway by Heyst's extended arm, she seemed
to wake up, flushed faintly--and this flush, passing off, carried away
with it the strange transfiguring mood. With a courageous gesture
she pushed back the heavy masses of her hair. The light clung to her
forehead. Her delicate nostrils quivered. Heyst seized her arm and
whispered excitedly:

"Slip out here, quickly! The screens will conceal you. Only you must
mind the stair-space. They are actually out--I mean the other two. You
had better see them before you--"

She made a barely perceptible movement of recoil, checked at once, and
stood still. Heyst released her arm.

"Yes, perhaps I had better," she said with unnatural deliberation, and
stepped out on the veranda to stand close by his side.

Together, one on each side of the screen, they peeped between the edge
of the canvas and the veranda-post entwined with creepers. A great heat
ascended from the sun-smitten ground, in an ever-rising wave, as if from
some secret store of earth's fiery heart; for the sky was growing cooler
already, and the sun had declined sufficiently for the shadows of Mr.
Jones and his henchman to be projected towards the bungalow side by
side--one infinitely slender, the other short and broad.

The two visitors stood still and gazed. To keep up the fiction of his
invalidism, Mr. Jones, the gentleman, leaned on the arm of Ricardo, the
secretary, the top of whose hat just came up to his governor's shoulder.

"Do you see them?" Heyst whispered into the girl's ear. "Here they
are, the envoys of the outer world. Here they are before you--evil
intelligence, instinctive savagery, arm in arm. The brute force is at
the back. A trio of fitting envoys perhaps--but what about the welcome?
Suppose I were armed, could I shoot these two down where they stand?
Could I?"

Without moving her head, the girl felt for Heyst's hand, pressed it and
thereafter did not let it go. He continued, bitterly playful:

"I don't know. I don't think so. There is a strain in me which l