Strange to say that gentleman himself was probably the only person on Nepenthe who still remained in ignorance of all these praeternatural occurrences.  In the early morning, after admiring the sea overhung by a cloudless sky and once more thanking the Duchess in his heart for such a delightful residence when he might have been boxed up in some stuffy hotel bedroom, he descended to the beach for his morning bathe.  Such was his custom.  The swim did him good, it freshened him up.

Then back to breakfast and a busy morning’s work, to settle up arrears of correspondence.  He wrote to various friends in England; he wrote a long letter—­the third since his arrival—­to his mother, telling her of all such things as might interest her; a nice gossipy letter, full of information about the entertainments of the foreigners on Nepenthe, about the obliging natives, the Russian colony, the persistent sirocco, his own domestic life, his improved health.  Much as he liked the place and people, he said, he expected to be leaving in a week or so.  He concluded with two pages describing his last visit to his cousin.  She was rather poorly or troubled in mind, he thought; he would see her again ere long.

And that reminded him—­he would write to Mrs. Meadows as well.  He did so, enquiring after her health, asking whether he could be of any assistance, and promising to call again shortly.  “Rather a formal epistle,” he concluded, on reading it through.  He was unable to force the note:  he could never write or talk otherwise than he felt, and this cousin, after all, was rather remote, self-centred, and difficult of comprehension.  “It must go as it is,” he decided.  “To be quite frank, she’s not exactly encouraging either.  Asks such queer questions.  What on earth did she mean by that conundrum about illegitimacy, I wonder?”

Then luncheon; then a long sleep till tea-time.  Everyone slept at this hour during the days of sirocco-heat.  What else was there to do?  He had already learned to look forward to that calm post-prandial hour of slumber.  One owes something to oneself, N’EST CE Pas? as Muhlen had said.

On waking he bethought him of an invitation to tea with Madame Steynlin.  He would have listened gladly to her music and her instructive and charitable talk about Nepenthe and its inhabitants.  But he was afraid of meeting Russians there.  The lady seemed to be specializing in Muscovites just then, and Mr. Heard was not in the Russian mood.  He would take what he called “a day off” from social duties.

Slipping his field glasses into his pocket, he rambled upwards by now familiar paths, past white farmhouses nestling in a riot of greenery; till he reached the barer regions.  The vines were more sparsely cultivated here, and soon all trace of human handcraft was at an end.  He found himself on a little plateau of volcanic cinders and lava-blocks.  The spare grasses and flowers that grew between fuliginous masses