expeditions, shrank from that act of savage energy, and began,
instead, to hunt for excuses.

No! It was not for him to run away like an incurable who cuts his
throat. He finished dressing and looked at his own impassive face
in the saloon mirror scornfully. While being pulled on shore in
the gig, he remembered suddenly the wild beauty of a waterfall seen
when hardly more than a boy, years ago, in Menado. There was a
legend of a governor-general of the Dutch East Indies, on official
tour, committing suicide on that spot by leaping into the chasm.
It was supposed that a painful disease had made him weary of life.
But was there ever a visitation like his own, at the same time
binding one to life and so cruelly mortal!

The dinner was indeed quiet. Willie, given half an hour's grace,
failed to turn up, and his chair remained vacant by the side of
Miss Moorsom. Renouard had the professor's sister on his left,
dressed in an expensive gown becoming her age. That maiden lady in
her wonderful preservation reminded Renouard somehow of a wax
flower under glass. There were no traces of the dust of life's
battles on her anywhere. She did not like him very much in the
afternoons, in his white drill suit and planter's hat, which seemed
to her an unduly Bohemian costume for calling in a house where
there were ladies. But in the evening, lithe and elegant in his
dress clothes and with his pleasant, slightly veiled voice, he
always made her conquest afresh. He might have been anybody
distinguished--the son of a duke. Falling under that charm
probably (and also because her brother had given her a hint), she
attempted to open her heart to Renouard, who was watching with all
the power of his soul her niece across the table. She spoke to him