Jasper's neck still irritated and excited him. "The hussy!" he

thought. "Smiling - eh? That's how you are amusing yourself.
Fooling your father finely, aren't you? You have a taste for that

sort of fun - have you? Well, we shall see - " He did not alter
his position, but on his pursed-up lips there also appeared a smile

of surly and ill-omened amusement, while his eyes returned to the
contemplation of his boots.

Freya felt hot with indignation. She sat radiantly fair in the
lamplight, her strong, well-shaped hands lying one on top of the

other in her lap. . . "Odious creature," she thought. Her face
coloured with sudden anger. "You have scared my maid out of her

senses," she said aloud. "What possessed you?"
He was thinking so deeply of her that the sound of her voice,

pronouncing these unexpected words, startled him extremely. He
jerked up his head and looked so bewildered that Freya insisted

impatiently:
"I mean Antonia. You have bruised her arm. What did you do it

for?"
"Do you want to quarrel with me?" he asked thickly, with a sort of

amazement. He blinked like an owl. He was funny. Freya, like all
women, had a keen sense of the ridiculous in outward appearance.

"Well, no; I don't think I do." She could not help herself. She
laughed outright, a clear, nervous laugh in which Heemskirk joined

suddenly with a harsh "Ha, ha, ha!"
Voices and footsteps were heard in the passage, and Jasper, with

old Nelson, came out. Old Nelson looked at his daughter
approvingly, for he liked the lieutenant to be kept in good humour.

And he also joined sympathetically in the laugh. "Now, lieutenant,
we shall have some dinner," he said, rubbing his hands cheerily.

Jasper had gone straight to the balustrade. The sky was full of
stars, and in the blue velvety night the cove below had a denser

blackness, in which the riding-lights of the brig and of the
gunboat glimmered redly, like suspended sparks. "Next time this

riding-light glimmers down there, I'll be waiting for her on the
quarter-deck to come and say 'Here I am,'" Jasper thought; and his

heart seemed to grow bigger in his chest, dilated by an oppressive
happiness that nearly wrung out a cry from him. There was no wind.

Not a leaf below him stirred, and even the sea was but a still
uncomplaining shadow. Far away on the unclouded sky the pale

lightning, the heat-lightning of the tropics, played tremulously
amongst the low stars in short, faint, mysteriously consecutive

flashes, like incomprehensible signals from some distant planet.
The dinner passed off quietly. Freya sat facing her father, calm

but pale. Heemskirk affected to talk only to old Nelson. Jasper's
behaviour was exemplary. He kept his eyes under control, basking

in the sense of Freya's nearness, as people bask in the sun without
looking up to heaven. And very soon after dinner was over, mindful

of his instructions, he declared that it was time for him to go on
board his ship.

Heemskirk did not look up. Ensconced in the rocking-chair, and
puffing at a cheroot, he had the air of meditating surlily over

some odiousoutbreak. So at least it seemed to Freya. Old Nelson
said at once: "I'll stroll down with you." He had begun a

professional conversation about the dangers of the New Guinea
coast, and wanted to relate to Jasper some experience of his own

"over there." Jasper was such a good listener! Freya made as if
to accompany them, but her father frowned, shook his head, and

nodded significantly towards the immovable Heemskirk blotting out
smoke with half-closed eyes and protruded lips. The lieutenant

must not be left alone. Take offence, perhaps.
Freya obeyed these signs. "Perhaps it is better for me to stay,"

she thought. Women are not generally prone to review their own
conduct, still less to condemn it. The embarrassing masculine

absurdities are in the main responsible for its ethics. But,
looking at Heemskirk, Freya felt regret and even remorse. His

thick bulk in repose suggested the idea of repletion, but as a
matter of fact he had eaten very little. He had drunk a great

deal, however. The fleshy lobes of his unpleasant big ears with
deeply folded rims were crimson. They quite flamed in the

neighbourhood of the flat, sallow cheeks. For a considerable time
he did not raise his heavy brown eyelids. To be at the mercy of

such a creature was humiliating; and Freya, who always ended by
being frank with herself, thought regretfully: "If only I had been

open with papa from the first! But then what an impossible life he
would have led me!" Yes. Men were absurd in many ways; lovably

like Jasper, impracticably like her father, odiously like that
grotesquely supine creature in the chair. Was it possible to talk

him over? Perhaps it was not necessary? "Oh! I can't talk to
him," she thought. And when Heemskirk, still without looking at

her, began resolutely to crush his half-smoked cheroot on the
coffee-tray, she took alarm, glided towards the piano, opened it in

tremendous haste, and struck the keys before she sat down.
In an instant the verandah, the whole carpetless woodenbungalow

raised on piles, became filled with an uproarious, confused
resonance. But through it all she heard, she felt on the floor the

heavy, prowling footsteps of the lieutenant moving to and fro at
her back. He was not exactly drunk, but he was sufficiently primed

to make the suggestions of his excited imagination seem perfectly
feasible and even clever; beautifully, unscrupulously clever.

Freya, aware that he had stopped just behind her, went on playing
without turning her head. She played with spirit, brilliantly, a

fierce piece of music, but when his voice reached her she went cold
all over. It was the voice, not the words. The insolent

familiarity of tone dismayed her to such an extent that she could
not understand at first what he was saying. His utterance was

thick, too.
"I suspected. . . . Of course I suspected something of your little

goings on. I am not a child. But from suspecting to seeing -
seeing, you understand - there's an enormous difference. That sort

of thing. . . . Come! One isn't made of stone. And when a man has
been worried by a girl as I have been worried by you, Miss Freya -

sleeping and waking, then, of course. . . . But I am a man of the
world. It must be dull for you here . . . I say, won't you leave

off this confounded playing . . .?"
This last was the only sentence really which she made out. She

shook her head negatively, and in desperation put on the loud
pedal, but she could not make the sound of the piano cover his

raised voice.
"Only, I am surprised that you should. . . . An English trading

skipper, a common fellow. Low, cheeky lot, infesting these
islands. I would make short work of such trash! While you have

here a good friend, a gentleman ready to worship at your feet -
your pretty feet - an officer, a man of family. Strange, isn't it?

But what of that! You are fit for a prince."
Freya did not turn her head. Her face went stiff with horror and

indignation. This adventure was altogether beyond her conception
of what was possible. It was not in her character to jump up and

run away. It seemed to her, too, that if she did move there was no
saying what might happen. Presently her father would be back, and

then the other would have to leave off. It was best to ignore - to
ignore. She went on playing loudly and correctly, as though she

were alone, as if Heemskirk did not exist. That proceeding
irritated him.

"Come! You may deceive your father," he bawled angrily, "but I am
not to be made a fool of! Stop this infernal noise . . . Freya . .

. Hey! You Scandinavian Goddess of Love! Stop! Do you hear?
That's what you are - of love. But the heathen gods are only

devils in disguise, and that's what you are, too - a deep little
devil. Stop it, I say, or I will lift you off that stool!"

Standing behind her, he devoured her with his eyes, from the golden
crown of her rigidlymotionless head to the heels of her shoes, the