An hour later the shadows had grown long and deep. The sun loitered
low in a sky silent and unfretted by cloud. A tiny wisp of breeze was
stealing about, stirring the mats at the windows and making the doors
creak whisperingly on their jungle-vine hinges.
Stella was laying the table for their evening meal. Penitent, she
was determined, as women sometimes are, that the dinner should be
proportionately nice. Tears were not beautifying, did not belong in her
dream; nor did anger and flashing eyes. Her best dress was protected, as
she went busily about her work, by one of the big, practical aprons Maud
had provided. She had opened some tins, and a cook book was spread before
her. It was to be rather special.
Stella sang a little, softly, as she worked, and was trying, half
consciously and not with entire conviction, to fancy that instead of
being here on this island, lost in a lonely sea, they were living
in Paris, she and Ferdinand, and that she was preparing a little
after-the-opera supper. What had the opera been? Well, what were some of
the operas? What was Paris like?
The house was very still. Presently the little meal was ready, and she
went to call her husband. She was going through the “parlour” toward the
outer door, when, to her surprise, she perceived that he wasn’t outside,
as she had supposed, but stretched instead on the cot. He lay perfectly
still, and she thought he must have fallen into a doze; but as she
approached him she became aware that it was a doze of a rather peculiar
sort, for his eyes were wide open, and, though she called to him, he did
not move—did not seem even aware of her presence. He looked strangely
detached and delighted.
Stella crossed the room, chilling with a sense of indefinable terror.
There was a pungent smell.
King’s lips were a little parted, and the expression on his face was
quite radiant. On a tabouret beside the cot stood a tiny spirit lamp
within a dome of glass open at the top. The wick was lighted, and in the
still, hot air the little flame scarcely wavered. Beside it on the stand
was something dark and mysterious.
One of his hands lay, idly and with characteristic grace, upon his
breast, gently rising and falling with the rhythm of the breath. The
other hand had dropped down on to the floor; the fingers curled, relaxed;
and just beneath them on the mat lay a curious little pipe.
Stella cried out softly. She felt numb, and despite the heat her hands
and brow were cold with damp. She could not bear to touch him, and could
not even make her lips move to speak to him again. She went away.
The waiting dinner grew stale. Stella sat on the step outside. The stars
were feeble at first; then they were lustrous and brilliant.
She did not know how long she sat there. It seemed very late when he
called to her, his voice thick and full of an agony of physical reaction.
She trembled and went in to him. Somehow she managed to light the lamp,
and tropical moths fluttered softly all about it.