xiously. From the waist upwards he remained shadowy,
with a row of buttons gleaming up to the vague outline of his chin.

"You may thank Captain Whalley for this," Mr. Van Wyk said curtly to him
before turning away.

The lamps on the veranda flung three long squares of light between
the uprights far over the grass. A bat flitted before his face like a
circling flake of velvety blackness. Along the jasmine hedge the night
air seemed heavy with the fall of perfumed dew; flowerbeds bordered the
path; the clipped bushes uprose in dark rounded clumps here and there
before the house; the dense foliage of creepers filtered the sheen of
the lamplight within in a soft glow all along the front; and everything
near and far stood still in a great immobility, in a great sweetness.

Mr. Van Wyk (a few years before he had had occasion to imagine himself
treated more badly than anybody alive had ever been by a woman) felt
for Captain Whalley's optimistic views the disdain of a man who had once
been credulous himself. His disgust with the world (the woman for a
time had filled it for him completely) had taken the form of activity
in retirement, because, though capable of great depth of feeling, he was
energetic and essentially practical. But there was in that uncommon old
sailor, drifting on the outskirts of his busy solitude, something that
fascinated his skepticism. His very simplicity (amusing enough) was like
a delicate refinement of an upright character. The striking dignity
of manner could be nothing else, in a man reduced to such a humble
position, but the expression of something essentially noble in the
character. With all his trust in mankind he was no fool; the serenity
of his temper at the end of so many years, since it could not obviously
have been appeased by success, wore an air of profound wisdom. Mr. Van
Wyk was amused at it sometimes. Even the very physical traits of the
old captain of the Sofala, his powerful frame, his reposeful mien, his
intelligent, handsome face, the big limbs, the benign courtesy, the
touch of rugged severity in the shaggy eyebrows, made up a seductive
personality. Mr. Van Wyk disliked littleness of every kind, but there
was nothing small about that man, and in the exemplary regularity of
many trips an intimacy had grown up between them, a warm feeling
at bottom under a kindly stateliness of forms agreeable to his
fastidiousness.

They kept their respective opinions on all worldly matters. His