short, black-eyed man with a cruel grip of fingers like a vice.
Quaking all over at a distance, extremely scared and half inclined

to laugh, she saw him enter the house at the back.
The interior of the bungalow was divided by two passages crossing

each other in the middle. At that point Heemskirk, by turning his
head lightly" target="_blank" title="ad.轻微地；细长的">slightly to the left as he passed, secured the evidence of

"carrying on" so irreconcilable with old Nelson's assurances that
it made him stagger, with a rush of blood to his head. Two white

figures, distinct against the light, stood in an unmistakable
attitude. Freya's arms were round Jasper's neck. Their faces were

characteristically superimposed on each other, and Heemskirk went
on, his throat choked with a sudden rising of curses, till on the

west verandah he stumbled blindly against a chair and then dropped
into another as though his legs had been swept from under him. He

had indulged too long in the habit of appropriating Freya to
himself in his thoughts. "Is that how you entertain your visitors

- you . . " he thought, so outraged that he could not find a
sufficiently degrading epithet.

Freya struggled a little and threw her head back.
"Somebody has come in," she whispered. Jasper, holding her clasped

closely to his breast, and looking down into her face, suggested
casually:

"Your father."
Freya tried to disengage herself, but she had not the heart

absolutely to push him away with her hands.
"I believe it's Heemskirk," she breathed out at him.

He, plunging into her eyes in a quiet rapture, was provoked to a
vague smile by the sound of the name.

"The ass is always knocking down my beacons outside the river," he
murmured. He attached no other meaning to Heemskirk's existence;

but Freya was asking herself whether the lieutenant had seen them.
"Let me go, kid," she ordered in a peremptory whisper. Jasper

obeyed, and, stepping back at once, continued his contemplation of
her face under another angle. "I must go and see," she said to

herself anxiously.
She instructed him hurriedly" target="_blank" title="ad.仓促地，忙乱地">hurriedly to wait a moment after she was gone

and then to slip on to the back verandah and get a quiet smoke
before he showed himself.

"Don't stay late this evening," was her last recommendation before
she left him.

Then Freya came out on the west verandah with her light, rapid
step. While going through the doorway she managed to shake down

the folds of the looped-up curtains at the end of the passage so as
to cover Jasper's retreat from the bower. Directly she appeared

Heemskirk jumped up as if to fly at her. She paused and he made
her an exaggerated low bow.

It irritated Freya.
"Oh! It's you, Mr. Heemskirk. How do you do?" She spoke in her

usual tone. Her face was not plainlyvisible to him in the dusk of
the deep verandah. He dared not trust himself to speak, his rage

at what he had seen was so great. And when she added with
serenity: "Papa will be coming in before long," he called her

horrid names silently, to himself, before he spoke with contorted
lips.

"I have seen your father already. We had a talk in the sheds. He
told me some very interesting things. Oh, very - "

Freya sat down. She thought: "He has seen us, for certain." She
was not ashamed. What she was afraid of was some foolish or

awkward complication. But she could not conceive how much her
person had been appropriated by Heemskirk (in his thoughts). She

tried to be conversational.
"You are coming now from Palembang, I suppose?"

"Eh? What? Oh, yes! I come from Palembang. Ha, ha, ha! You
know what your father said? He said he was afraid you were having

a very dull time of it here."
"And I suppose you are going to cruise in the Moluccas," continued

Freya, who wanted to impart some useful information to Jasper if
possible. At the same time she was always glad to know that those

two men were a few hundred miles apart when not under her eye.
Heemskirk growled angrily.

"Yes. Moluccas," glaring in the direction of her shadowy figure.
"Your father thinks it's very quiet for you here. I tell you what,

Miss Freya. There isn't such a quiet spot on earth that a woman
can't find an opportunity of making a fool of somebody."

Freya thought: "I mustn't let him provoke me." Presently the
Tamil boy, who was Nelson's head servant, came in with the lights.

She addressed him at once with voluble directions where to put the
lamps, told him to bring the tray with the gin and bitters, and to

send Antonia into the house.
"I will have to leave you to yourself, Mr. Heemskirk, for a while,"

she said.
And she went to her room to put on another frock. She made a quick

change of it because she wished to be on the verandah before her
father and the lieutenant met again. She relied on herself to

regulate that evening's intercourse between these two. But
Antonia, still scared and hysterical, exhibited a bruise on her arm

which roused Freya's indignation.
"He jumped on me out of the bush like a tiger," said the girl,

laughing nervously with frightened eyes.
"The brute!" thought Freya. "He meant to spy on us, then." She

was enraged, but the recollection of the thick Dutchman in white
trousers wide at the hips and narrow at the ankles, with his

shoulder-straps and black bullet head, glaring at her in the light
of the lamps, was so repulsively comical that she could not help a

smiling grimace. Then she became anxious. The absurdities of
three men were forcing this anxiety upon her: Jasper's

impetuosity, her father's fears, Heemskirk's infatuation. She was
very tender to the first two, and she made up her mind to display

all her femininediplomacy. All this, she said to herself, will be
over and done with before very long now.

Heemskirk on the verandah, lolling in a chair, his legs extended
and his white cap reposing on his stomach, was lashing himself into

a fury of an atrocious characteraltogether incomprehensible to a
girl like Freya. His chin was resting on his chest, his eyes gazed

stonily at his shoes. Freya examined him from behind the curtain.
He didn't stir. He was ridiculous. But this absolute stillness

was impressive. She stole back along the passage to the east
verandah, where Jasper was sitting quietly in the dark, doing what

he was told, like a good boy.
"Psst," she hissed. He was by her side in a moment.

"Yes. What is it?" he murmured.
"It's that beetle," she whispered uneasily. Under the impression

of Heemskirk's sinister immobility she had half a mind to let
Jasper know that they had been seen. But she was by no means

certain that Heemskirk would tell her father - and at any rate not
that evening. She concluded rapidly that the safest thing would be

to get Jasper out of the way as soon as possible.
"What has he been doing?" asked Jasper in a calm undertone.

"Oh, nothing! Nothing. He sits there looking cross. But you know
how he's always worrying papa."

"Your father's quite unreasonable," pronounced Jasper judicially.
"I don't know," she said in a doubtful tone. Something of old

Nelson's dread of the authorities had rubbed off on the girl since
she had to live with it day after day. "I don't know. Papa's

afraid of being reduced to beggary, as he says, in his old days.
Look here, kid, you had better clear out to-morrow, first thing."

Jasper had hoped for another afternoon with Freya, an afternoon of