dangerous, though what the precise danger was she had forgotten. The
upas was the tree she really meant.

At any rate she summoned David in, and Sanderson came presently after
him.

For a long time, before deciding on this peremptory step, she had
watched them surreptitiously from the drawing-room window--her husband
and her guest. The dusk enveloped them with its damp veil of gauze. She
saw the glowing tips of their cigars, and heard the drone of voices.
Bats flitted overhead, and big, silent moths whirred softly over the
rhododendron blossoms. And it came suddenly to her, while she watched,
that her husband had somehow altered these last few days--since Mr.
Sanderson's arrival in fact. A change had come over him, though what it
was she could not say. She hesitated, indeed, to search. That was the
instinctive dread operating in her. Provided it passed she would rather
not know. Small things, of course, she noticed; small outward signs. He
had neglected _The Times_ for one thing, left off his speckled
waistcoats for another. He was absent-minded sometimes; showed vagueness
in practical details where hitherto he showed decision. And--he had
begun to talk in his sleep again.

These and a dozen other small peculiarities came suddenly upon her with
the rush of a combined attack. They brought with them a faint distress
that made her shiver. Momentarily her mind was startled, then confused,
as her eyes picked out the shadowy figures in the dusk, the cedar
covering them, the Forest close at their backs. And then, before she
could think, or seek internal guidance as her habit was, this whisper,
muffled and very hurried, ran across her brain: "It's Mr. Sanderson.
Call David in at once!"