He tried to recollect what Keith had told him concerning Muhlen, that corrupt personality.  Retlow . . . where had he heard that name before?  In vain he flogged his memory.  There was an alien power in this brightness; a power as of a vampire that drained away his faculties, his vitality; a spirit of evil, exhaling from the sunny calm.  It made a mock, a mirage, of the landscape which danced before his eyes; it distorted the realities of nature, the works of man. . . .

Presently he observed that Keith and his companions were clothed and occupied in dragging things out of the preposterous food-receptacle.  They called up to him.  The spell was released.

He descended.

“Nice bathe?” he enquired.

“Rather!  And now these fellows will make a passable omelette, to begin with.  I don’t fancy cold luncheons, do you?  They seem to lie dead on one’s stomach.”

“Are those sailors not coming with us?”

“No.  They are well paid for their work.  No doubt they would like to be in my service too.  But I never employ islanders, except for casual jobs; it saves me all kinds of local trouble and family intrigues.  Nor yet older people.  They are so apt to think; and once a servant begins to think he ceases to be of use.  I believe in the outsider, for all purposes of human intercourse.  If you want a thing done, go to the outsider, the intelligent amateur.  And when you marry, Heard, be sure to select a wife from another class, another province, another country—­another planet, if possible.  Otherwise you will repent it.  Not that I see any objection, on principle, to incest; it strikes me as the most natural proceeding in the world—­”

“Dear me!”

“And yet—­that inexplicable prejudice.  It is probably artificial and of modern origin.  I suspect the priestly caste.  Royal families kept up the custom and do so still, like that of Siam.  Odd, how anachronisms linger longest at the two poles of society.  What do you say,” he went on, “to climbing a little up that gorge, into the shade?  I cannot digest properly with the sun staring at me.  And tell me, as we go along, your impressions of the ruin. . .  I perceive drawbacks to incest; grave practical drawbacks—­sterility, inbreeding.  Yes, there is obviously something to be said for exogamy.  Audi ALTERAM PARTEM as Eames might say, though God knows why he thinks it sounds better in Latin.  Seen the ghost?”

The bishop remembered a certain answer given him by Madame Steynlin, to whom he had once spoken of the “tonic” effects of Keith’s conversation.

“A tonic?” she had said.  “Very likely!  But not a tonic for men and women.  A tonic for horses.”

After luncheon they improvised a shelter in order to repose awhile.  It was the right thing to do on Nepenthe at that hour of the day, and Mr. Keith tried to conform to custom even under unusual circumstances such as these.  Protected by the boat’s scarlet awning from the rays of the sun, they slumbered through the flaming hours.