mpressed his hearers enough. Never mind. Some
other time. Now he would go home and make his wife get up and listen to
him. Why should she not get up?--and mix a cocktail for him--and listen
patiently. Just so. She shall. If he wanted he could make all the Da
Souza family get up. He had only to say a word and they would all come
and sit silently in their night vestments on the hard, cold ground of
his compound and listen, as long as he wished to go on explaining to
them from the top of the stairs, how great and good he was. They would.
However, his wife would do--for to-night.

His wife! He winced inwardly. A dismal woman with startled eyes and
dolorously drooping mouth, that would listen to him in pained wonder
and mute stillness. She was used to those night-discourses now. She had
rebelled once--at the beginning. Only once. Now, while he sprawled in
the long chair and drank and talked, she would stand at the further
end of the table, her hands resting on the edge, her frightened eyes
watching his lips, without a sound, without a stir, hardly breathing,
till he dismissed her with a contemptuous: "Go to bed, dummy." She would
draw a long breath then and trail out of the room, relieved but unmoved.
Nothing could startle her, make her scold or make her cry. She did
not complain, she did not rebel. That first difference of theirs
was decisive. Too decisive, thought Willems, discontentedly. It had
frightened the soul out of her body apparently. A dismal woman! A
damn'd business altogether! What the devil did he want to go and saddle
himself. . . . Ah! Well! he wanted a home, and the match seemed to
please Hudig, and Hudig gave him the bungalow, that flower-bowered house
to which he was wending his way in the cool moonlight. And he had
the worship of the Da Souza tribe. A man of his stamp could carry off
anything, do anything, aspire to anything. In another five years those
white people who attended the Sunday card-parties of the Governor would
accept him--half-caste wife and all! Hooray! He saw his shadow dart
forward and wave a hat, as big as a rum barrel, at the end of an
arm several yards long. . . . Who shouted hooray? . . . He smiled
shamefacedly to himself, and, pushing his hands deep into his pockets,
walked faster with a suddenly grave face. Behind him--to the left--a
cigar end glowed in the gateway of Mr. Vinck's front yard. Leaning
against one of the brick pillars, Mr. Vinck, the cashier of Hudig &
Co., smoked the