that creature of irresistible seductions were a daughter of
mortals. The very intensity of his desire, as if his soul were
streaming after her through his eyes, defeated his object of
keeping hold of her as long as possible with, at least, one of his
senses. Her moving outlines dissolved into a misty coloured
shimmer of a woman made of flame and shadows, crossing the
threshold of his house.

The days which followed were not exactly such as Renouard had
feared--yet they were not better than his fears. They were
accursed in all the moods they brought him. But the general aspect
of things was quiet. The professor smoked innumerable pipes with
the air of a worker on his holiday, always in movement and looking
at things with that mysteriously sagacious aspect of men who are
admittedly wiser than the rest of the world. His white head of
hair--whiter than anything within the horizon except the broken
water on the reefs--was glimpsed in every part of the plantation
always on the move under the white parasol. And once he climbed
the headland and appeared suddenly to those below, a white speck
elevated in the blue, with a diminutive but statuesque effect.

Felicia Moorsom remained near the house. Sometimes she could be
seen with a despairing expression scribbling rapidly in her lock-up
dairy. But only for a moment. At the sound of Renouard's
footsteps she would turn towards him her beautiful face, adorable
in that calm which was like a wilful, like a cruel ignoring of her
tremendous power. Whenever she sat on the verandah, on a chair
more specially reserved for her use, Renouard would stroll up and
sit on the steps near her, mostly silent, and often not trusting
himself to turn his glance on her. She, very still with her eyes