s a long, low room, panelled in teak
half-way up the walls, and the shelves held a multitude of fine
bindings. There were good rugs on the parquet door, but no ornaments
anywhere, save three. On the carved mantelpiece stood two of the old
soapstone birds which they used to find at Zimbabwe, and between, on an
ebony stand, a half moon of alabaster, curiously carved with zodiacal
figures. My host had altered his scheme of furnishing, but I approved
the change.

He came in about half-past six, after I had consumed two cigars and all
but fallen asleep. Three years make a difference in most men, but I
was not prepared for the change in Lawson. For one thing, he had grown
fat. In place of the lean young man I had known, I saw a heavy,
flaccid being, who shuffled in his gait, and seemed tired and listless.
His sunburn had gone, and his face was as pasty as a city clerk's. He
had been walking, and wore shapeless flannel clothes, which hung loose
even on his enlarged figure. And the worst of it was, that he did not
seem over-pleased to see me. He murmured something about my journey,
and then flung himself into an arm-chair and looked out of the window.

I asked him if he had been ill.

"Ill! No!" he said crossly. "Nothing of the kind. I'm perfectly well."

"You don't look as fit as this place should make you. What do you do
with yourself? Is the shooting as good as you hoped?"

He did not answer, but I thought I heard him mutter something like
"shooting be damned."

Then I tried the subject of the house. I praised it extravagantly, but
with conviction. "There can be no place like it in the world," I said.

He turned his eyes on me at last, and I saw that they were as deep and
restless as ever. With his pallid face they made him look curiously
Semitic. I had been right in my theory about his ancestry.

"Yes," he said slowly, "there is no place like it--in the world."

Then he pulled himself to his feet. "I'm going to change," he said.
"Dinner is at eight. Ring for Travers, and he'll show you your room."

I dressed in a noble bedroom, with an outlook over the garden-vale and
the escarpment to the far line of the plains, now blue and saffron in
the sunset. I dressed in an ill temper, for I was seriously offended
with Lawson, and also seriously alarmed. He was either very unwell or
going out of his mind, and it was clear, too, that he would resent any
anxiety on his account. I ransacked my memory for