in
the starlight peace became a shadowy country of inhuman strife, a
battle-field of phantoms terrible and charming, august or ignoble,
struggling ardently for the possession of our helpless hearts. An
unquiet and mysterious country of inextinguishable desires and fears.

A plaintive murmur rose in the night; a murmur saddening and startling,
as if the great solitudes of surrounding woods had tried to whisper
into his ear the wisdom of their immense and lofty indifference. Sounds
hesitating and vague floated in the air round him, shaped themselves
slowly into words; and at last flowed on gently in a murmuring stream
of soft and monotonous sentences. He stirred like a man waking up and
changed his position slightly. Arsat, motionless and shadowy, sitting
with bowed head under the stars, was speaking in a low and dreamy tone--

". . . for where can we lay down the heaviness of our trouble but in
a friend's heart? A man must speak of war and of love. You, Tuan, know
what war is, and you have seen me in time of danger seek death as other
men seek life! A writing may be lost; a lie may be written; but what the
eye has seen is truth and remains in the mind!"

"I remember," said the white man, quietly. Arsat went on with mournful
composure--

"Therefore I shall speak to you of love. Speak in the night. Speak
before both night and love are gone--and the eye of day looks upon my
sorrow and my shame; upon my blackened face; upon my burnt-up heart."

A sigh, short and faint, marked an almost imperceptible pause, and then
his words flowed on, without a stir, without a gesture.

"After the time of trouble and war was over and you went away from my
country in the pursuit of your desires, which we, men of the islands,
cannot understand, I and my brother became again, as we had been
before, the sword-bearers of the Ruler. You know we were men of family,
belonging to a ruling race, and more fit than any to carry on our right
shoulder the emblem of power. And in the time of prosperity Si Dendring
showed us favour, as we, in time of sorrow, had showed to him the
faithfulness of our courage. It was a time of peace. A time of
deer-hunts and cock-fights; of idle talks and foolish squabbles between
men whose bellies are full and weapons are rusty. But the sower watched
the young rice-shoots grow up without fear, and the traders came and
went, departed lean and returned fat into the river of peace. They
brought news, too. Brought lies an