Like the rest of us who act, all he
could say to himself, with a somewhat affected grimness, was:
"We shall see!"
This mood of grim doubt intruded on him only when he was alone. There
were not many such moments in his day now; and he did not like them when
they came. On this morning he had no time to grow uneasy. Alma came out
to join him long before the sun, rising above the Samburan ridge, swept
the cool shadow of the early morning and the remnant of the night's
coolness clear off the roof under which they had dwelt for more than
three months already. She came out as on other mornings. He had heard
her light footsteps in the big room--the room where he had unpacked the
cases from London; the room now lined with the backs of books halfway up
on its three sides. Above the cases the fine matting met the ceiling of
tightly stretched white calico. In the dusk and coolness nothing gleamed
except the gilt frame of the portrait of Heyst's father, signed by a
famous painter, lonely in the middle of a wall.
Heyst did not turn round.
"Do you know what I was thinking of?" he asked.
"No," she said. Her tone betrayed always a shade of anxiety, as though
she were never certain how a conversation with him would end. She leaned
on the guard-rail by his side.
"No," she repeated. "What was it?" She waited. Then, rather with
reluctance than shyness, she asked:
"Were you thinking of me?"
"I was wondering when you would come out," said Heyst, still without
looking at the girl--to whom, after several experimental essays in
combining detached letters and loose syllables, he had given the name of
Lena.
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