ink from the
base. His parents had had the forethought to provide him with two
sisters, one a year older than himself, one a year his junior; and these
girls, who at the present hour suggest in our metropolitan assemblies
the charm and allurements of a politer age, had taken their brother in
hand. They had taught him what is best left undone, the grace of
self-effacement, and they had given him some breath of the aroma which
they themselves exhaled. To this his parents had added a smile of
singular beauty, and features clear-cut and sure. In short, his people
had done their best for him. And now that he was seeing the world in
that easiest way, which consists in travelling around it, his letter of
credit was not only in his pocket, but in his face and manner as well.

"I must go to-morrow," he continued. And as he tried to map his
departure, the tinkle of a footfall across the hall routed and disturbed
his thoughts. Unsummoned there visited him a melody, heard long since,
the accompaniment of a song of love. With a gesture he forced it back.
Had he not understood--? No; he remembered now there was no boat from
Siak for several days. He might engage a prahu, though, and in it effect
a crossing to Perang; he could even take the train and journey to
another place. Indeed, he reflected, he might readily do that. And as he
told himself this, from across the hall a tinkle fainter than before
reached his ear. He heard a whispering voice, a door closed, and some
one beat upon a gong of wood. It was midnight, he knew.

He threw his coat aside and stared at the stars. They were taciturn
still, yet more communicative than ever before. One in particular, that
shone sheer above the bale-bale, seemed instinct with lessons and
sayings of sooth. And to the precepts it uttered, its companions
acquiesced, and smiled. Everything, even to the immaterial, the surge
of the sea, the trail of the fire-flies, and the glint of a moonbeam,
now aslant at his feet, conspired to coerce his will. The very air was
alive with caresses, redolent with the balm and the odors of bamboo.

Slowly he undid the lachets of a shoe.

"It is wrong," he muttered, and a breeze that loitered answered, "It is
right." "I will go," he continued, and the great stars chorused, "You
will stay."

Meditatively still he continued to disrobe; but in spite of the stars
and the moonbeams the light must have been insufficient, for presently
he lit a candle, monologuing to hi