passionate that seemed to force itself upon him even against his will.
His pulses were strung to a tropical intensity that made him aware of
the man's blood in him, racing at fever heat through veins that felt
swollen to bursting.

He entered his bungalow and flung off his clothes, took a plunge in a
bath of tepid water, from which he emerged with a pricking sensation all
over him that made the lightest touch a torture, and finally, keyed up
to a pitch of sensitiveness that excited his own contempt, he pulled on
some pyjamas and went out to his _charpoy_ on the veranda.

He dismissed the _punkah_ coolie, feeling his presence to be
intolerable, and threw himself down with his coat flung open. The
oppression of the atmosphere was as though a red-hot lid were being
forced down upon the tortured earth. The blackness beyond the veranda
was like a solid wall. Sleep was out of the question. He could not
smoke. It was an effort even to breathe. He could only lie in torment
and wait--and wait.

The flashes of lightning had become less frequent. A kind of waking
dream began to move in his brain. A figure gradually grew upon that
screen of darkness--an elf-like thing, intangible, transparent, a
quivering, shadowy image, remote as the dawn.

Wide-eyed, he watched the vision, his pulses beating with a mad longing
so fierce as to be utterly beyond his own control. It was as though he
had drunk strong wine and had somehow slipped the leash of ordinary
convention. The savagery of the night, the tropical intensity of it, had
got into him. Half-naked, wholly primitive, he lay and waited--and
waited.