Waking up suddenly, Lena looked, without raising her head from the pillow, at the room in which she was alone. She got up quickly, as if to counteract¹ the awful sinking of her heart by the vigorous use of her limbs. But this sinking was only momentary². Mistress of herself from pride, from love, from necessity, and also because of a woman’s vanity in self-sacrifice, she met Heyst, returning from the strangers’ bungalow³, with a dear glance and a smile.

The smile he managed to answer, but, noticing that he avoided her eyes, she composed her lips and lowered her gaze. For the same reason she hastened to speak to him in a tone of indifference⁴, which she put on without effort, as if she had grown adept⁵ in duplicity since sunrise.

“You have been over there again?”

“I have. I thought — but you had better know first that we have lost Wang for good.”

She repeated “For good?” as if she had not understood.

“For good or evil — I shouldn’t know which if you were to ask me. He has dismissed himself. He’s gone.”

“You expected him to go, though, didn’t you?”

Heyst sat down on the other side of the table.

“Yes. I expected it as soon as I discovered that he had annexed⁶ my revolver. He says he hasn’t taken it. That’s untrue of course. A Chinaman would not see the sense of confessing under any circumstances. To deny any charge is a principle of right conduct; but he hardly expected to be believed. He was a little enigmatic at the last, Lena. He startled me.”

Heyst paused. The girl seemed absorbed in her own thoughts.

“He startled me,” I repeated Heyst. She noted⁷ the anxiety in his tone, and turned her head slightly to look at him across the table.

“It must have been something — to startle you,” she said. In the depth of her parted lips, like a ripe pomegranate, there was a gleam of white teeth.

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