the world. She looked at him
with special attention, and with a puzzled expression which gave to her
face an air of innocence.

This was during one of the "intervals" between the two parts of the
concert. She had come down that time without being incited thereto by a
pinch from the awful Zangiacomo woman. It is difficult to suppose that
she was seduced by the uncovered intellectual forehead and the long
reddish moustaches of her new friend. New is not the right word. She had
never had a friend before; and the sensation of this friendliness going
out to her was exciting by its novelty alone. Besides, any man who did
not resemble Schomberg appeared for that very reason attractive. She was
afraid of the hotel-keeper, who, in the daytime, taking advantage of the
fact that she lived in the hotel itself, and not in the Pavilion with
the other "artists" prowled round her, mute, hungry, portentous behind
his great beard, or else assailed her in quiet corners and empty
passages with deep, mysterious murmurs from behind, which, not
withstanding their clear import, sounded horribly insane somehow.

The contrast of Heyst's quiet, polished manner gave her special delight
and filled her with admiration. She had never seen anything like that
before. If she had, perhaps, known kindness in her life, she had never
met the forms of simple courtesy. She was interested by it as a very
novel experience, not very intelligible, but distinctly pleasurable.

"I tell you they are too many for me," she repeated, sometimes
recklessly, but more often shaking her head with ominous dejection.

She had, of course, no money at all. The quantities of "black men" all
about frightened her. She really had no definite idea where she was on
the surface of the globe. The orchestra was generally taken from the
steamer to some hotel, and kept shut up there till it was time to go on
board another steamer. She could not remember the names she heard.

"How do you call this place again?" she used to ask Heyst.

"Sourabaya," he would say distinctly, and would watch the discouragement
at the outlandish sound coming into her eyes, which were fastened on his
face.

He could not defend himself from compassion. He suggested that she might
go to the consul, but it was his conscience that dictated this advice,
not his conviction. She had never heard of the animal or of its uses. A
consul! What was it? Who was he? What could he do? And when she learned
that perhaps he