" he asked.

"She did not go with them. She ran away."

This was the pronouncement Davidson obtained next. It introduced a new
sort of interest.

"Well! Well!" he exclaimed placidly; and then, with the air of a man who
knows life: "Who with?" he inquired with assurance.

Mrs. Schomberg's immobility gave her an appearance of listening
intently. Perhaps she was really listening; but Schomberg must have been
finishing his sleep in some distant part of the house. The silence was
profound, and lasted long enough to become startling. Then, enthroned
above Davidson, she whispered at last:

"That friend of yours."

"Oh, you know I am here looking for a friend," said Davidson hopefully.
"Won't you tell me--"

"I've told you"

"Eh?"

A mist seemed to roll away from before Davidson's eyes, disclosing
something he could not believe.

"You can't mean it!" he cried. "He's not the man for it." But the last
words came out in a faint voice. Mrs. Schomberg never moved her head the
least bit. Davidson, after the shock which made him sit up, went slack
all over.

"Heyst! Such a perfect gentleman!" he exclaimed weakly.

Mrs. Schomberg did not seem to have heard him. This startling fact did
not tally somehow with the idea Davidson had of Heyst. He never talked
of women, he never seemed to think of them, or to remember that they
existed; and then all at once--like this! Running off with a casual
orchestra girl!

"You might have knocked me down with a feather," Davidson told us some
time afterwards.

By then he was taking an indulgent view of both the parties to that
amazing transaction. First of all, on reflection, he was by no means
certain that it prevented Heyst from being a perfect gentleman, as
before. He confronted our open grins or quiet smiles with a serious
round face. Heyst had taken the girl away to Samburan; and that was
no joking matter. The loneliness, the ruins of the spot, had impressed
Davidson's simple soul. They were incompatible with the frivolous
comments of people who had not seen it. That black jetty, sticking out
of the jungle into the empty sea; these roof-ridges of deserted houses
peeping dismally above the long grass! Ough! The gigantic and funeral
blackboard sign of the Tropical Belt Coal Company, still emerging from a
wild growth of bushes like an inscription stuck above a grave figured by
the tall heap of unsold coal at the shore end of the wharf, added to the
general desolation.

Thus was t