must see first . . . h'm!"

"All right. I'll take the chance. I'll wait for you as long as
you like. What else have I to do in this infernal hole of a port!"

Before I had uttered my last words we had set off at a swinging
pace. We turned a couple of corners and entered a street
completely empty of traffic, of semi-rural aspect, paved with
cobblestones nestling in grass tufts. The house came to the line
of the roadway; a single story on an elevated basement of rough-
stones, so that our heads were below the level of the windows as we
went along. All the jalousies were tightly shut, like eyes, and
the house seemed fast asleep in the afternoon sunshine. The
entrance was at the side, in an alley even more grass-grown than
the street: a small door, simply on the latch.

With a word of apology as to showing me the way, Jacobus preceded
me up a dark passage and led me across the naked parquet floor of
what I supposed to be the dining-room. It was lighted by three
glass doors which stood wide open on to a verandah or rather loggia
running its brick arches along the garden side of the house. It
was really a magnificent garden: smooth green lawns and a gorgeous
maze of flower-beds in the foreground, displayed around a basin of
dark water framed in a marble rim, and in the distance the massed
foliage of varied trees concealing the roofs of other houses. The
town might have been miles away. It was a brilliantly coloured
solitude, drowsing in a warm, voluptuous silence. Where the long,
still shadows fell across the beds, and in shady nooks, the massed
colours of the flowers had an extraordinary magnificence of effect.
I stood entranced. Jacobus grasped me delicately above the elbow,