“Mad.  Utterly mad.  Apparently he has no consciousness of what he has done.”

He lured him to the sofa and sat beside him and began to talk in a low tone of the contents of the papers.  Anastasius replied cheerfully, proud at being noticed by the stranger.  The papers referred to a precious secret, a gigantic combination, which he had spent years in maturing.  I shivered at the sound of his voice, and turned to Lola.

“This is no place for you.  Go into your bedroom till you are wanted.”

I held the door open for her.  She put her hands up to her face and reeled, and I thought she would have fallen; but she roused herself.

“I don’t want to break down—­not yet.  I shall if I’m left alone—­come and sit with me, for God’s sake.”

“Very well,” said I.

She passed me and I followed; but at the door I turned and glanced round the cheerful, sunny room.  There, against the background of blue sky and tree tops framed by the window, sat Anastasius Papadopoulos, swinging his little legs and talking bombastically to the tanned and grizzled doctor, and opposite stood the correctly attired hotel manager in the attitude in which he habitually surveyed the lay-out of the table d’hote, keeping watch beside the white-covered shape on the floor.  I was glad to shut the sight from my eyes.  We waited silently in the bedroom, Lola sitting on the bed and hiding her face in the pillows, and I standing by the window and looking out at the smiling mockery of the fair earth.  An agonising spasm of pain—­a momento mori—­shot through me and passed away.  I thanked God that a few weeks would see the end of me.  I had always enjoyed the comedy of life.  It had been to me a thing of infinite jest.  But this stupid, meaningless tragedy was carrying the joke too far.  My fastidiousness revolted at its vulgarity.  I no longer wished to inhabit a world where such jests were possible. . . .  I had never seen a man die before.  I was surprised at the swiftness and the ugliness of it. . . .  I suddenly realised that I was smoking a cigarette, which I was quite unconscious of having lit.  I threw it away.  A minute afterwards I felt that if I did not smoke I should go crazy.  So I lit another. . . .  The ghastly silliness of the murder! . . .  Colonel Bunnion’s loud laugh rose from the terrace below, jarring horribly on my ears.  A long green praying mantis that had apparently mounted on the bougainvillea against the hotel wall appeared in meditative stateliness on the window-sill.  I picked the insect up absent-mindedly, and began to play with it.  Lola’s voice from the bed startled me and caused me to drop the mantis.  She spoke hoarsely.

“Tell me—­what are they going to do with him?”

I turned round.  She had raised a crushed face from the pillows, and looked at me haggardly.  I noticed a carafe of brandy and a siphon by the bedside.  I mixed her a strong dose, and, before replying, made her drink it.