“You may thank Captain Whalley for this,” Mr. Van Wyk said curtly to him before turning away.

The lamps on the veranda flung three long squares of light between the uprights far over the grass.  A bat flitted before his face like a circling flake of velvety blackness.  Along the jasmine hedge the night air seemed heavy with the fall of perfumed dew; flowerbeds bordered the path; the clipped bushes uprose in dark rounded clumps here and there before the house; the dense foliage of creepers filtered the sheen of the lamplight within in a soft glow all along the front; and everything near and far stood still in a great immobility, in a great sweetness.

Mr. Van Wyk (a few years before he had had occasion to imagine himself treated more badly than anybody alive had ever been by a woman) felt for Captain Whalley’s optimistic views the disdain of a man who had once been credulous himself.  His disgust with the world (the woman for a time had filled it for him completely) had taken the form of activity in retirement, because, though capable of great depth of feeling, he was energetic and essentially practical.  But there was in that uncommon old sailor, drifting on the outskirts of his busy solitude, something that fascinated his skepticism.  His very simplicity (amusing enough) was like a delicate refinement of an upright character.  The striking dignity of manner could be nothing else, in a man reduced to such a humble position, but the expression of something essentially noble in the character.  With all his trust in mankind he was no fool; the serenity of his temper at the end of so many years, since it could not obviously have been appeased by success, wore an air of profound wisdom.  Mr. Van Wyk was amused at it sometimes.  Even the very physical traits of the old captain of the Sofala, his powerful frame, his reposeful mien, his intelligent, handsome face, the big limbs, the benign courtesy, the touch of rugged severity in the shaggy eyebrows, made up a seductive personality.  Mr. Van Wyk disliked littleness of every kind, but there was nothing small about that man, and in the exemplary regularity of many trips an intimacy had grown up between them, a warm feeling at bottom under a kindly stateliness of forms agreeable to his fastidiousness.

They kept their respective opinions on all worldly matters.  His other convictions Captain Whalley never intruded.  The difference of their ages was like another bond between them.  Once, when twitted with the uncharitableness of his youth, Mr. Van Wyk, running his eye over the vast proportions of his interlocutor, retorted in friendly banter—­

“Oh.  You’ll come to my way of thinking yet.  You’ll have plenty of time.  Don’t call yourself old:  you look good for a round hundred.”

But he could not help his stinging incisiveness, and though moderating it by an almost affectionate smile, he added—­

“And by then you will probably consent to die from sheer disgust.”