I waited till the noise of his footsteps had died out of the
dining-room, and I waited a little longer. Then turning towards
the distant door I raised my voice along the verandah:

"Alice!"

Nothing answered me, not even a stir behind the door. Jacobus's
house might have been made empty for me to make myself at home in.
I did not call again. I had become aware of a great
discouragement. I was mentally jaded, morally dejected. I turned
to the garden again, sitting down with my elbows spread on the low
balustrade, and took my head in my hands.

The evening closed upon me. The shadows lengthened, deepened,
mingled together into a pool of twilight in which the flower-beds
glowed like coloured embers; whiffs of heavy scent came to me as if
the dusk of this hemisphere were but the dimness of a temple and
the garden an enormous censer swinging before the altar of the
stars. The colours of the blossoms deepened, losing their glow one
by one.

The girl, when I turned my head at a slight noise, appeared to me
very tall and slender, advancing with a swaying limp, a floating
and uneven motion which ended in the sinking of her shadowy form
into the deep low chair. And I don't know why or whence I received
the impression that she had come too late. She ought to have
appeared at my call. She ought to have . . . It was as if a
supreme opportunity had been missed.

I rose and took a seat close to her, nearly opposite her arm-chair.