ut Halvard, in crisp white,
standing behind the steaming supper viands, brought his thoughts again
to the day's familiar routine.

The cabin was divided through its forward half by the centerboard
casing, and against it a swinging table had been elevated, an
immaculate cover laid, and the yacht's china, marked in cobalt with
the name Gar, placed in a polished and formal order. Halvard's service
from the stove to the table was as silent and skillful as his housing
of the sails; he replaced the hot dishes with cold, and provided a
glass bowl of translucent preserved figs.

Supper at an end, Woolfolk rolled a cigarette from shag that resembled
coarse black tea and returned to the deck. Night had fallen on the
shore, but the water still held a pale light; in the east the sky was
filled with an increasing, cold radiance. It was the moon, rising
swiftly above the flat land. The moonlight grew in intensity, casting
inky shadows of the spars and cordage across the deck, making the
light in the cabin a reddish blur by contrast. The icy flood swept
over the land, bringing out with a new emphasis the close, glossy
foliage and broken facade--it appeared unreal, portentous. The odors
of the flowers, of the orange blossoms, uncoiled in heavy, palpable
waves across the water, accompanied by the owl's fluctuating cry. The
sense of imminence increased, of a _genius loci_ unguessed and
troublous, vaguely threatening in the perfumed dark.

II

John Woolfolk had said nothing to Halvard of the woman he had seen
swimming in the bay. He was conscious of no particular reason for
remaining silent about her; but the thing had become invested with a
glamour that, he felt, would be destroyed by commonplace discussion.
He had no personal interest in the episode, he was careful to add.
Interests of that sort, serving to connect him with the world, with
society, with women, had totally disappeared from his life. He rolled
and lighted a fresh cigarette, and in the minute orange spurt of the
match his mouth was somber and forbidding.

The unexpected appearance on the glassy water had merely started into
being a slight, fanciful curiosity. The women of that coast did not
commonly swim at dusk in their bays; such simplicity obtained now only
in the reaches of the highest civilization. There were, he knew, no
hunting camps here, and the local inhabitants were mere sodden
squatters. A chart lay in its flat canvas case by the wheel; and, in
t