though she had just jumped out of bed in the panic of a fire.

She sat leaning on her elbow, looking at nothing. Why did she stay
listening to my absurd chatter? And not only that; but why did she
powder her face in preparation for my arrival? It seemed to be her
idea of making a toilette, and in her untidy negligence a sign of
great effort towards personal adornment.

But I might have been mistaken. The powdering might have been her
daily practice and her presence in the verandah a sign of an
indifference so complete as to take no account of my existence.
Well, it was all one to me.

I loved to watch her slow changes of pose, to look at her long
immobilities composed in the graceful lines of her body, to observe
the mysterious narrow stare of her splendid black eyes, somewhat
long in shape, half closed, contemplating the void. She was like a
spellbound creature with the forehead of a goddess crowned by the
dishevelled magnificent hair of a gipsy tramp. Even her
indifference was seductive. I felt myself growing attached to her
by the bond of an irrealisable desire, for I kept my head--quite.
And I put up with the moral discomfort of Jacobus's sleepy
watchfulness, tranquil, and yet so expressive; as if there had been
a tacit pact between us two. I put up with the insolence of the
old woman's: "Aren't you ever going to leave us in peace, my good
fellow?" with her taunts; with her brazen and sinister scolding.
She was of the true Jacobus stock, and no mistake.

Directly I got away from the girl I called myself many hard names.
What folly was this? I would ask myself. It was like being the