he setting sun. Then he said abruptly: "Where is Mrs. Quinton!"

"She has gone up to her room," said the doctor. "That is her shadow on
the blind."

Father Brown looked up, and frowningly scrutinised a dark outline at the
gas-lit window.

"Yes," he said, "that is her shadow," and he walked a yard or two and
threw himself upon a garden seat.

Flambeau sat down beside him; but the doctor was one of those energetic
people who live naturally on their legs. He walked away, smoking, into
the twilight, and the two friends were left together.

"My father," said Flambeau in French, "what is the matter with you?"

Father Brown was silent and motionless for half a minute, then he said:
"Superstition is irreligious, but there is something in the air of this
place. I think it's that Indian--at least, partly."

He sank into silence, and watched the distant outline of the Indian, who
still sat rigid as if in prayer. At first sight he seemed motionless,
but as Father Brown watched him he saw that the man swayed ever so
slightly with a rhythmic movement, just as the dark tree-tops swayed
ever so slightly in the wind that was creeping up the dim garden paths
and shuffling the fallen leaves a little.

The landscape was growing rapidly dark, as if for a storm, but they
could still see all the figures in their various places. Atkinson was
leaning against a tree with a listless face; Quinton's wife was still
at her window; the doctor had gone strolling round the end of the
conservatory; they could see his cigar like a will-o'-the-wisp; and the
fakir still sat rigid and yet rocking, while the trees above him began
to rock and almost to roar. Storm was certainly coming.

"When that Indian spoke to us," went on Brown in a conversational
undertone, "I had a sort of vision, a vision of him and all his
universe. Yet he only said the same thing three times. When first he
said 'I want nothing,' it meant only that he was impenetrable, that Asia
does not give itself away. Then he said again, 'I want nothing,' and
I knew that he meant that he was sufficient to himself, like a cosmos,
that he needed no God, neither admitted any sins. And when he said the
third time, 'I want nothing,' he said it with blazing eyes. And I knew
that he meant literally what he said; that nothing was his desire and
his home; that he was weary for nothing as for wine; that annihilation,
the mere destruction of everything or anything--"

Two drops of rain fell; and f