of the room. Nina laid down on her back on a pile of soft mats, her
hands entwined under her head, gazing through the shutterless hole,
serving as a window at the stars twinkling on the black sky; she was
awaiting the time of start for her appointed meeting-place. With quiet
happiness she thought of that meeting in the great forest, far from all
human eyes and sounds. Her soul, lapsing again into the savage mood,
which the genius of civilisation working by the hand of Mrs. Vinck could
never destroy, experienced a feeling of pride and of some slight trouble
at the high value her worldly-wise mother had put upon her person; but
she remembered the expressive glances and words of Dain, and,
tranquillised, she closed her eyes in a shiver of pleasant anticipation.

There are some situations where the barbarian and the, so-called,
civilised man meet upon the same ground. It may be supposed that Dain
Maroola was not exceptionally delighted with his prospective mother-in-
law, nor that he actually approved of that worthy woman's appetite for
shining dollars. Yet on that foggy morning when Babalatchi, laying aside
the cares of state, went to visit his fish-baskets in the Bulangi creek,
Maroola had no misgivings, experienced no feelings but those of
impatience and longing, when paddling to the east side of the island
forming the back-water in question. He hid his canoe in the bushes and
strode rapidly across the islet, pushing with impatience through the
twigs of heavy undergrowth intercrossed over his path. From motives of
prudence he would not take his canoe to the meeting-place, as Nina had
done. He had left it in the main stream till his return from the other
side of the island. The heavy warm fog was closing rapidly round him,
but he managed to catch a fleeting glimpse of a light away to the left,
proceeding from Bulangi's house. Then he could see nothing in the
thickening vapour, and kept to the path only by a sort of instinct, which
also led him to the very point on the opposite shore he wished to reach.