coloured checks, and the red lips parted slightly, with the
gleam of her teeth within.

"And then I won't be any good," she added with conviction. "That I
won't! I can only be what you think I am."

He made a slight movement. She put her hand on his arm, without raising
her head, and went on, her voice animated in the stillness of her body:

"It is so. It couldn't be any other way with a girl like me and a man
like you. Here we are, we two alone, and I can't even tell where we
are."

"A very well-known spot of the globe," Heyst uttered gently. "There
must have been at least fifty thousand circulars issued at the time--a
hundred and fifty thousand, more likely. My friend was looking after
that, and his ideas were large and his belief very strong. Of us two it
was he who had the faith. A hundred and fifty thousand, certainly."

"What is it you mean?" she asked in a low tone.

"What should I find fault with you for?" Heyst went on. "For being
amiable, good, gracious--and pretty?"

A silence fell. Then she said:

"It's all right that you should think that of me. There's no one here to
think anything of us, good or bad."

The rare timbre of her voice gave a special value to what she uttered.
The indefinable emotion which certain intonations gave him, he was
aware, was more physical than moral. Every time she spoke to him she
seemed to abandon to him something of herself--something excessively
subtle and inexpressible, to which he was infinitely sensible, which he
would have missed horribly if she were to go away. While he was looking
into her eyes she raised her bare forearm, out of the short sleeve, and
held it in the air till he noticed it and hastened to pose his great
bronze moustaches on the whiteness of the skin. Then they went in.

Wang immediately appeared in front, and, squatting on his heels, began
to potter mysteriously about some plants at the foot of the veranda.
When Heyst and the girl came out again, the Chinaman had gone in his
peculiar manner, which suggested vanishing out of existence rather than
out of sight, a process of evaporation rather than of movement. They
descended the steps, looking at each other, and started off smartly
across the cleared ground; but they were not ten yards away when,
without perceptible stir or sound, Wang materialized inside the empty
room. The Chinaman stood still with roaming eyes, examining the walls as
if for signs, for inscriptions; exploring the floor as if for