joyless features with a touch of pathos.

  Heyst was temperamentally sympathetic. To have them passing and repassing

  close to his little table was painful to him. He was preparing to rise and go out

  when he noticed that two white muslin dresses and crimson sashes had not yet left

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  the platform. One of these dresses concealed the raw-boned frame of the woman

  with the bad-tempered curve to her nostrils. She was no less a personage than Mrs.

  Zangiacomo. She had left the piano, and, with her back to the hall, was preparing

  the parts for the second half of the concert, with a brusque, impatient action of her

  ugly elbow. This task done, she turned, and, perceiving the other white muslin

  dress motionless on a chair in the second row, she strode towards it between the

  music-stands with an aggressive and masterful gait. On the lap of that dress there

  lay, unclasped and idle, a pair of small hands, not very white, attached to well-

  formed arms. The next detail Heyst was led to observe was the arrangement of the

  hair—two thick, brown tresses rolled round an attractively shaped head.

  "A girl, by Jove!" he exclaimed mentally.

  It was evident that she was a girl. It was evident in the outline of the shoulders,

  in the slender white bust springing up, barred slantwise by the crimson sash, from

  the bell-shaped spread of muslin skirt hiding the chair on which she sat averted a

  little from the body of the hall. Her feet, in low white shoes, were crossed prettily.

  She had captured Heyst's awakened faculty of observation; he had the sensation

  of a new experience. That was because his faculty of observation had never before

  been captured by any feminine creature in that marked and exclusive fashion. He

  looked at her anxiously, as no man ever looks at another man; and he positively

  forgot where he was. He had lost touch with his surroundings. The big woman,

  advancing, concealed the girl from his sight for a moment. She bent over the seated

  youthful figure, in passing it very close, as if to drop a word into its ear. Her lips

  did certainly move. But what sort of word could it have been to make the girl jump

  up so swiftly? Heyst, at his table, was surprised into a sympathetic start. He glanced

  quickly round. Nobody was looking towards the platform; and when his eyes swept

  back there again, the girl, with the big woman treading at her heels, was coming

  down the three steps from the platform to the floor of the hall. There she paused,

  stumbled one pace forward, and stood still again, while the other—the escort, the

  dragoon, the coarse big woman of the piano—passed her roughly, and, marching

  truculently down the centre aisle between the chairs and tables, went out to rejoin

  the hook-nosed Zangiacomo somewhere outside. During her extraordinary transit,

  as if everything in the hall were dirt under her feet, her scornful eyes met the

  upward glance of Heyst, who looked away at once towards the girl. She had not

  moved. Her arms hung down; her eyelids were lowered.

  Heyst laid down his half-smoked cigar and compressed his lips. Then he got up.

  It was the same sort of impulse which years ago had made him cross the sandy

  street of the abominable town of Delli in the island of Timor and accost Morrison,

  practically a stranger to him then, a man in trouble, expressively harassed, dejected,

  lonely.

  It was the same impulse. But he did not recognize it. He was not thinking of

  Morrison then. It may be said that, for the first time since the final abandonment of

  the Samburan coal mine, he had completely forgotten the late Morrison. It is true

  that to a certain extent he had forgotten also where he was. Thus, unchecked by any

  sort of self consciousness, Heyst walked up the central passage.

  Several of the women, by this time, had found anchorage here and there among

  the occupied tables. They talked to the men, leaning on their elbows, and

  suggesting funnily—if it hadn't been for the crimson sashes—in their white dresses

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  an assembly of middle-aged brides with free and easy manners and hoarse

  voices. The murmuring noise of conversations carried on with some spirit filled

  Schomberg's concert-room. Nobody remarked Heyst's movements; for indeed he

  was not the only man on his legs there. He had been confronting the girl for some

  time before she became aware of his presence. She was looking down, very still,

  without colour, without glances, without voice, without movement. It was only

  when Heyst addressed her in his courteous tone that she raised her eyes.

  "Excuse me," he said in English, "but that horrible female has done something to

  you. She has pinched you, hasn't she? I am sure she pinched you just now, when

  she stood by your chair."

  The girl received this overture with the wide, motionless stare of profound

  astonishment. Heyst, vexed with himself, suspected that she did not understand

  what he said. One could not tell what nationality these women were, except that

  they were of all sorts. But she was astonished almost more by the near presence of

  the man himself, by his largely bald head, by the white brow, the sunburnt cheeks,

  the long, horizontal moustaches of crinkly bronze hair, by the kindly expression of

  the man's blue eyes looking into her own. He saw the stony amazement in hers give

  way to a momentary alarm, which was succeeded by an expression of resignation.

  "I am sure she pinched your arm most cruelly," he murmured, rather

  disconcerted now at what he had done.

  It was a great comfort to hear her say:

  "It wouldn't have been the first time. And suppose she did—what are you going

  to do about it?"

  "I don't know," he said with a faint, remote playfulness in his tone which had not

  been heard in it lately, and which seemed to catch her ear pleasantly. "I am grieved

  to say that I don't know. But can I do anything? What would you wish me to do?

  Pray command me."

  Again, the greatest astonishment became visible in her face; for she now

  perceived how different he was from the other men in the room. He was as

  different from them as she was different from the other members of the ladies'

  orchestra.

  "Command you?" she breathed, after a time, in a bewildered tone. "Who are

  you?" she asked a little louder.

  "I am staying in this hotel for a few days. I just dropped in casually here. This

  outrage—"

  "Don't you try to interfere," she said so earnestly that Heyst asked, in his faintly

  playful tone:

  "Is it your wish that I should leave you?"

  "I haven't said that," the girl answered. "She pinched me because I didn't get

  down here quick enough—"

  "I can't tell you how indignant I am—" said Heyst. "But since you are down here

  now," he went on, with the ease of a man of the world speaking to a young lady in

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  a drawing-room, "hadn't we better sit down?"

  She obeyed his inviting gesture, and they sat down on the nearest chairs. They

  looked at each other across a little round table with a surprised, open gaze, self-

  consciousness growing on them so slowly that it was a long time before they

  averted their eyes; and very soon they met again, temporarily, only to rebound, as it

  were. At last they steadied in contact, but by that time, say some fifteen minutes

  from the moment when they sat down, the "interval" came to an end.

  So much for their eyes. As to the conversation, it had been perfectly insignificant

  because naturally they had nothing to say to each other. Heyst had been interested

  by the girl's physiognomy. Its expression was neither simple nor yet very clear. It

  was not distinguished—that could not be expected—but the features had more

  fineness than those of any other feminine countenance he had ever had the

  opportunity to observe so closely. There was in it something indefinably audacious

  and infinitely miserable—because the temperament and the existence of that girl

  were reflected in it. But her voice! It seduced Heyst by its amazing quality. It was a

  voice fit to utter the most exquisite things, a voice which would have made silly

  chatter supportable and the roughest talk fascinating. Heyst drank in its charm as

  one listens to the tone of some instrument without heeding the tune.

  "Do you sing as well as play?" he asked her abruptly.

  "Never sang a note in my life," she said, obviously surprised by the irrelevant

  question; for they had not been discoursing of sweet sounds. She was clearly

  unaware of her voice. "I don't remember that I ever had much reason to sing since I

  was little," she added.

  That inelegant phrase, by the mere vibrating, warm nobility of the sound, found

  its way into Heyst's heart. His mind, cool, alert, watched it sink there with a sort of

  vague concern at the absurdity of the occupation, till it rested at the bottom, deep

  down, where our unexpressed longings lie.

  "You are English, of course?" he said.

  "What do you think?" she answered in the most charming accents. Then, as if

  thinking that it was her turn to place a question: "Why do you always smile when

  you speak?"

  It was enough to make anyone look grave, but her good faith was so evident that

  Heyst recovered himself at once.

  "It's my unfortunate manner—" he said with his delicate, polished playfulness.

  "It is very objectionable to you?"

  She was very serious.

  "No. I only noticed it. I haven't come across so many pleasant people as all that,

  in my life."

  "It's certain that this woman who plays the piano is infinitely more disagreeable

  than any cannibal I have ever had to do with."

  "I believe you!" She shuddered. "How did you come to have anything to do with

  cannibals?"

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  "It would be too long a tale," said Heyst with a faint smile. Heyst's smiles were

  rather melancholy, and accorded badly with his great moustaches, under which his

  mere playfulness lurked as comfortable as a shy bird in its native thicket. "Much

  too long. How did you get amongst this lot here?"

  "Bad luck," she answered briefly.

  "No doubt, no doubt," Heyst assented with slight nods. Then, still indignant at

  the pinch which he had divined rather than actually seen inflicted: "I say, couldn't

  you defend yourself somehow?"

  She had risen already. The ladies of the orchestra were slowly regaining their

  places. Some were already seated, idle stony-eyed, before the music-stands. Heyst

  was standing up, too.

  "They are too many for me," she said.

  These few words came out of the common experience of mankind; yet by virtue

  of her voice, they thrilled Heyst like a revelation. His feelings were in a state of

  confusion, but his mind was clear.

  "That's bad. But it isn't actual ill-usage that this girl is complaining of," he

  thought lucidly after she left him.

  CHAPTER TWO

  That was how it began. How it was that it ended, as we know it did end, is not so

  easy to state precisely. It is very clear that Heyst was not indifferent, I won't say to

  the girl, but to the girl's fate. He was the same man who had plunged after the

  submerged Morrison whom he hardly knew otherwise than by sight and through

  the usual gossip of the islands. But this was another sort of plunge altogether, and

  likely to lead to a very different kind of partnership.

  Did he reflect at all? Probably. He was sufficiently reflective. But if he did, it

  was with insufficient knowledge. For there is no evidence that he paused at any

  time between the date of that evening and the morning of the flight. Truth to say,

  Heyst was not one of those men who pause much. Those dreamy spectators of the

  world's agitation are terrible once the desire to act gets hold of them. They lower

  their heads and charge a wall with an amazing serenity which nothing but an

  indisciplined imagination can give.

  He was not a fool. I suppose he knew—or at least he felt—where this was

  leading him. But his complete inexperience gave him the necessary audacity. The

  girl's voice was charming when she spoke to him of her miserable past, in simple

  terms, with a sort of unconscious cynicism inherent in the truth of the ugly

  conditions of poverty. And whether because he was humane or because her voice

  included all the modulations of pathos, cheerfulness, and courage in its compass, it

  was not disgust that the tale awakened in him, but the sense of an immense sadness.

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  On a later evening, during the interval between the two parts of the concert, the

  girl told Heyst about herself. She was almost a child of the streets. Her father was a

  musician in the orchestras of small theatres. Her mother ran away from him while

  she was little, and the landladies of various poor lodging-houses had attended

  casually to her abandoned childhood. It was never positive starvation and absolute

  rags, but it was the hopeless grip of poverty all the time. It was her father who

  taught her to play the violin. It seemed that he used to get drunk sometimes, but

  without pleasure, and only because he was unable to forget his fugitive wife. After

  he had a paralytic stroke, falling over with a crash in the well of a music-hall

  orchestra during the performance, she had joined the Zangiacomo company. He

  was now in a home for incurables.

  "And I am here," she finished, "with no one to care if I make a hole in the water

  the next chance I get or not."

  Heyst told her that he thought she could do a little better than that, if it was only

  a question of getting out of the world. She looked at him with special attention, and

  with a puzzled expression which gave to her face an air of innocence.

  This was during one of the "intervals" between the two parts of the concert. She

  had c
ome down that time without being incited thereto by a pinch from the awful

  Zangiacomo woman. It is difficult to suppose that she was seduced by the

  uncovered intellectual forehead and the long reddish moustaches of her new friend.

  New is not the right word. She had never had a friend before; and the sensation of

  this friendliness going out to her was exciting by its novelty alone. Besides, any

  man who did not resemble Schomberg appeared for that very reason attractive. She

  was afraid of the hotel-keeper, who, in the daytime, taking advantage of the fact

  that she lived in the hotel itself, and not in the Pavilion with the other "artists"

  prowled round her, mute, hungry, portentous behind his great beard, or else

  assailed her in quiet corners and empty passages with deep, mysterious murmurs

  from behind, which, not withstanding their clear import, sounded horribly insane

  somehow.

  The contrast of Heyst's quiet, polished manner gave her special delight and filled

  her with admiration. She had never seen anything like that before. If she had,

  perhaps, known kindness in her life, she had never met the forms of simple

  courtesy. She was interested by it as a very novel experience, not very intelligible,

  but distinctly pleasurable.

  "I tell you they are too many for me," she repeated, sometimes recklessly, but

  more often shaking her head with ominous dejection.

  She had, of course, no money at all. The quantities of "black men" all about

  frightened her. She really had no definite idea where she was on the surface of the

  globe. The orchestra was generally taken from the steamer to some hotel, and kept

  shut up there till it was time to go on board another steamer. She could not

  remember the names she heard.

  "How do you call this place again?" she used to ask Heyst.

  "Sourabaya," he would say distinctly, and would watch the discouragement at

  the outlandish sound coming into her eyes, which were fastened on his face.

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  He could not defend himself from compassion. He suggested that she might go

  to the consul, but it was his conscience that dictated this advice, not his conviction.

  She had never heard of the animal or of its uses. A consul! What was it? Who was