hey came. On this morning he had no time to grow uneasy. Alma came out
to join him long before the sun, rising above the Samburan ridge, swept
the cool shadow of the early morning and the remnant of the night's
coolness clear off the roof under which they had dwelt for more than
three months already. She came out as on other mornings. He had heard
her light footsteps in the big room--the room where he had unpacked the
cases from London; the room now lined with the backs of books halfway up
on its three sides. Above the cases the fine matting met the ceiling of
tightly stretched white calico. In the dusk and coolness nothing gleamed
except the gilt frame of the portrait of Heyst's father, signed by a
famous painter, lonely in the middle of a wall.

Heyst did not turn round.

"Do you know what I was thinking of?" he asked.

"No," she said. Her tone betrayed always a shade of anxiety, as though
she were never certain how a conversation with him would end. She leaned
on the guard-rail by his side.

"No," she repeated. "What was it?" She waited. Then, rather with
reluctance than shyness, she asked:

"Were you thinking of me?"

"I was wondering when you would come out," said Heyst, still without
looking at the girl--to whom, after several experimental essays in
combining detached letters and loose syllables, he had given the name of
Lena.

She remarked after a pause:

"I was not very far from you."

"Apparently you were not near enough for me."

"You could have called if you wanted me," she said. "And I wasn't so
long doing my hair."

"Apparently it was too long for me."

"Well, you were thinking of me, anyhow. I am glad of it. Do you know,
it seems to me, somehow, that if you were to stop thinking of me I
shouldn't be in the world at all!"

He turned round and looked at her. She often said things which surprised
him. A vague smile faded away on her lips before his scrutiny.

"What is it?" he asked. "It is a reproach?"

"A reproach! Why, how could it be?" she defended herself.

"Well, what did it mean?" he insisted.

"What I said--just what I said. Why aren't you fair?"

"Ah, this is at least a reproach!"

She coloured to the roots of her hair.

"It looks as if you were trying to make out that I am disagreeable," she
murmured. "Am I? You will make me afraid to open my mouth presently. I
shall end by believing I am no good."

Her head drooped a little. He looked at her smooth, low brow, the
faintly