There was really no opposition.  The professor smoking a pipe, and very comfortable in an ulster buttoned over his tropical clothes, was the first to speak from his long chair.

“Most excellent advice.”

Next to him Miss Moorsom assented by a long silence.  Then in a voice as of one coming out of a dream —

“And so this is Malata,” she said.  “I have often wondered . . .”

A shiver passed through Renouard.  She had wondered!  What about?  Malata was himself.  He and Malata were one.  And she had wondered!  She had . . .

The professor’s sister leaned over towards Renouard.  Through all these days at sea the man’s—­the found man’s—­existence had not been alluded to on board the schooner.  That reticence was part of the general constraint lying upon them all.  She, herself, certainly had not been exactly elated by this finding—­poor Arthur, without money, without prospects.  But she felt moved by the sentiment and romance of the situation.

“Isn’t it wonderful,” she whispered out of her white wrap, “to think of poor Arthur sleeping there, so near to our dear lovely Felicia, and not knowing the immense joy in store for him to-morrow.”

There was such artificiality in the wax-flower lady that nothing in this speech touched Renouard.  It was but the simple anxiety of his heart that he was voicing when he muttered gloomily —

“No one in the world knows what to-morrow may hold in store.”

The mature lady had a recoil as though he had said something impolite.  What a harsh thing to say—­instead of finding something nice and appropriate.  On board, where she never saw him in evening clothes, Renouard’s resemblance to a duke’s son was not so apparent to her.  Nothing but his—­ah—­bohemianism remained.  She rose with a sort of ostentation.

“It’s late—­and since we are going to sleep on board to-night . . .” she said.  “But it does seem so cruel.”

The professor started up eagerly, knocking the ashes out of his pipe.  “Infinitely more sensible, my dear Emma.”

Renouard waited behind Miss Moorsom’s chair.

She got up slowly, moved one step forward, and paused looking at the shore.  The blackness of the island blotted out the stars with its vague mass like a low thundercloud brooding over the waters and ready to burst into flame and crashes.

“And so—­this is Malata,” she repeated dreamily, moving towards the cabin door.  The clear cloak hanging from her shoulders, the ivory face—­for the night had put out nothing of her but the gleams of her hair—­made her resemble a shining dream-woman uttering words of wistful inquiry.  She disappeared without a sign, leaving Renouard penetrated to the very marrow by the sounds that came from her body like a mysterious resonance of an exquisite instrument.

He stood stock still.  What was this accidental touch which had evoked the strange accent of her voice?  He dared not answer that question.  But he had to answer the question of what was to be done now.  Had the moment of confession come?  The thought was enough to make one’s blood run cold.