o messenger from another world. She was unique.
To his famished eyes, starved senses, and fever-driven brain, she was
her entire sex personified. She was the one woman for whom he had always
sought, alluring, soothing, maddening; if need be, to be fought for; the
one thing to be desired. Opposite, across the table, her husband, the
ex-wrestler, chasseur d'Afrique, elephant poacher, bulked large as an
ox. Men felt as well as saw his bigness. Captain Hardy deferred to
him on matters of trade. The purser deferred to him on questions of
administration. He answered them in his big way, with big thoughts, in
big figures. He was fifty years ahead of his time. He beheld the Congo
open to the world; in the forests where he had hunted elephants he
foresaw great "factories," mining camps, railroads, feeding gold and
copper ore to the trunk line, from the Cape to Cairo. His ideas were the
ideas of an empire-builder. But, while the others listened, fascinated,
hypnotized, Everett saw only the woman, her eyes fixed on her husband,
her fingers turning and twisting her diamond rings. Every now and again
she raised her eyes to Everett almost reproachfully, as though to say,
"Why do you not listen to him? It is much better for you than to look at
me."

When they had gone, all through the sultry night, until the sun drove
him to his cabin, like a caged animal Everett paced and repaced the
deck. The woman possessed his mind and he could not drive her out. He
did not wish to drive her out. What the consequences might be he did not
care. So long as he might see her again, he jeered at the consequences.
Of one thing he was positive. He could not now leave the Congo. He would
follow her to Brazzaville. If he were discreet, Ducret might invite
him to make himself their guest. Once established in her home, she MUST
listen to him. No man ever before had felt for any woman the need he
felt for her. It was too big for him to conquer. It would be too big for
her to resist.

In the morning a note from Ducret invited Everett and Cuthbert to join
him in an all-day excursion to the water-fall beyond Matadi. Everett
answered the note in person. The thought of seeing the woman calmed
and steadied him like a dose of morphine. So much more violent than the
fever in his veins was the fever in his brain that, when again he was
with her, he laughed happily, and was grandly at peace. So different was
he from the man they had met the night before, that the Fren