off to live like a prince on that island, where nobody can get at him. A
damn silly girl . . . It's disgusting--tfui!"

He spat. He choked with rage--for he saw visions, no doubt. He jumped up
from his chair, and went away to flee from them--perhaps. He went into
the room where Mrs. Schomberg sat. Her aspect could not have been very
soothing to the sort of torment from which he was suffering.

Davidson did not feel called upon to defend Heyst. His proceeding was to
enter into conversation with one and another, casually, and showing no
particular knowledge of the affair, in order to discover something about
the girl. Was she anything out of the way? Was she pretty? She couldn't
have been markedly so. She had not attracted special notice. She was
young--on that everybody agreed. The English clerk of Tesmans remembered
that she had a sallow face. He was respectable and highly proper. He
was not the sort to associate with such people. Most of these women were
fairly battered specimens. Schomberg had them housed in what he called
the Pavilion, in the grounds, where they were hard at it mending and
washing their white dresses, and could be seen hanging them out to dry
between the trees, like a lot of washerwomen. They looked very much
like middle-aged washerwomen on the platform, too. But the girl had
been living in the main building along with the boss, the director, the
fellow with the black beard, and a hard-bitten, oldish woman who took
the piano and was understood to be the fellow's wife.

This was not a very satisfactory result. Davidson stayed on, and even
joined the table d'hote dinner, without gleaning any more information.
He was resigned.

"I suppose," he wheezed placidly, "I am bound to see her some day."