The heat was great, the air was still, all the long windows of the
house stood wide open. At the further end, grouped round a lady's
work-table, several chairs disposed sociably suggested invisible
occupants, a company of conversing shades. Renouard looked towards
them with a sort of dread. A most elusive, faint sound of ghostly
talk issuing from one of the rooms added to the illusion and
stopped his already hesitating footsteps. He leaned over the
balustrade of stone near a squat vase holding a tropical plant of a
bizarre shape. Professor Moorsom coming up from the garden with a
book under his arm and a white parasol held over his bare head,
found him there and, closing the parasol, leaned over by his side
with a remark on the increasing heat of the season. Renouard
assented and changed his position a little; the other, after a
short silence, administered unexpectedly a question which, like the
blow of a club on the head, deprived Renouard of the power of
speech and even thought, but, more cruel, left him quivering with
apprehension, not of death but of everlasting torment. Yet the
words were extremely simple.

"Something will have to be done soon. We can't remain in a state
of suspended expectation for ever. Tell me what do you think of
our chances?"

Renouard, speechless, produced a faint smile. The professor
confessed in a jocular tone his impatience to complete the circuit
of the globe and be done with it. It was impossible to remain
quartered on the dear excellent Dunsters for an indefinite time.
And then there were the lectures he had arranged to deliver in
Paris. A serious matter.