SHE was sitting on the veranda -waiting for her husband to come in for luncheon. The Malay boy had drawn the blinds when the morning lost its freshness, but she had partly raised one of them so that she could look at the river. Under the breathless sun of midday it had the -white pallor of death. A native was paddling along in a dug--out so small that it hardly showed above the surface of the water. The colours of the day -were ashy and wan. They -were but the various tones of the heat. (It was like an Eastern melody, in the minor key. which exacerbates the nerves by its -ambiguous monotony; and the ear awaits impatiently a resolution, but waits in vain.) The cicadas sang their grating song -with a frenzied energy; it was as continual and monotonous as the rustling of a brook over the stones; but on a sudden it was drowned by the loud singing of a bird, mellifluous and rich; and for an instant, -with a catch at her heart, she thought of the English blackbird.
Then she heard her husband’s step on the gravel path behind the bungalow, the path that led to the court-house in which he had been working, and she rose from her chair to greet him. He ran up the short flight of steps, for the bungalow was built on piles, and at the door the boy was waiting to take his topee. He came into the room-which served them as a dining-room and parlour, and his eyes lit up with pleasure as he saw her.
’Hulloa, Doris. Hungry?’ Ravenous.’
’It’ll only take me a minute to have a bath and then I’m ready.’
’Be quick,’ she smiled.
He disappeared into his dressing-room and she heard him -whistling cheerily -while, with the carelessness with -which she was always remonstrating, he. tore off his clothes and flung them on the floor. He ’was twenty-nine, but he -was still a school-boy; he would never grow up. That -was -why she had fallen in love with him, perhaps, for no amount of affection could persuade her that he -was good-looking. He was a little round man, with a red face like the fall moon, and blue eyes. He was rather pimply. She had examined him carefully and had been forced to confess to him that he had not a single feature which she could praise. She had told him often that he wasn’t her type at all.