She came down the verandah steps at once and they moved off.  “You go first,” he proposed, “and I’ll direct you.  To the left.”

She was wearing a short nankin skirt, a muslin blouse; he could see through the thin stuff the skin of her shoulders, of her arms.  The noble delicacy of her neck caused him a sort of transport.  “The path begins where these three palms are.  The only palms on the island.”

“I see.”

She never turned her head.  After a while she observed:  “This path looks as if it had been made recently.”

“Quite recently,” he assented very low.

They went on climbing steadily without exchanging another word; and when they stood on the top she gazed a long time before her.  The low evening mist veiled the further limit of the reefs.  Above the enormous and melancholy confusion, as of a fleet of wrecked islands, the restless myriads of sea-birds rolled and unrolled dark ribbons on the sky, gathered in clouds, soared and stooped like a play of shadows, for they were too far for them to hear their cries.

Renouard broke the silence in low tones.

“They’ll be settling for the night presently.”  She made no sound.  Round them all was peace and declining sunshine.  Near by, the topmost pinnacle of Malata, resembling the top of a buried tower, rose a rock, weather-worn, grey, weary of watching the monotonous centuries of the Pacific.  Renouard leaned his shoulders against it.  Felicia Moorsom faced him suddenly, her splendid black eyes full on his face as though she had made up her mind at last to destroy his wits once and for all.  Dazzled, he lowered his eyelids slowly.

“Mr. Renouard!  There is something strange in all this.  Tell me where he is?”

He answered deliberately.

“On the other side of this rock.  I buried him there myself.”

She pressed her hands to her breast, struggled for her breath for a moment, then:  “Ohhh! . . .  You buried him! . . .  What sort of man are you? . . .  You dared not tell! . . .  He is another of your victims? . . .  You dared not confess that evening. . . .  You must have killed him.  What could he have done to you? . . .  You fastened on him some atrocious quarrel and . . .”

Her vengeful aspect, her poignant cries left him as unmoved as the weary rock against which he leaned.  He only raised his eyelids to look at her and lowered them slowly.  Nothing more.  It silenced her.  And as if ashamed she made a gesture with her hand, putting away from her that thought.  He spoke, quietly ironic at first.

“Ha! the legendary Renouard of sensitive idiots—­the ruthless adventurer—­the ogre with a future.  That was a parrot cry, Miss Moorsom.  I don’t think that the greatest fool of them all ever dared hint such a stupid thing of me that I killed men for nothing.  No, I had noticed this man in a hotel.  He had come from up country I was told, and was doing nothing.  I saw him sitting there lonely in a corner like a sick crow, and I went over one evening to talk to him.  Just on impulse.  He wasn’t impressive.  He was pitiful.  My worst enemy could have told you he wasn’t good enough to be one of Renouard’s victims.  It didn’t take me long to judge that he was drugging himself.  Not drinking.  Drugs.”