“Theater built by the state,” answered the driver, without looking around.  “Cost millions.”

“Reis?” asked Lewis, smiling.

“Reis?  Bah!” grunted the driver.  “Pounds.”

The street left the level and started to climb.  Lewis looked anxiously to right and left.  He saw a placard that read, “Street of the Consolation.”

“Stop!” he cried.

The driver drew up at the curb.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“This isn’t the Street of the Consolation,” said Lewis, dismayed.  “Where’s the big cotton-tree and the priest’s house, and—­and the bamboos?  Where are the bamboos?”

The driver looked around curiously.

“I remember them, the bamboos,” he said, nodding.  “They’re gone.”

“Wait here,” said Lewis.

He stepped out of the car and started to walk slowly up the hill.  He felt a strange sinking of the heart.  In his day there had been no sidewalk, only a clay path, beaten hard by the feet of three children on their way to school.  In his day the blank row of houses had been a mud taipa wall, broken just here by the little gate of the priest’s house.  In his day there had been that long, high-plumed bank of bamboos, forever swaying and creaking, behind the screen of which had lain the wonder realm of childhood.

He came to the spot where the gate to Consolation Cottage had been.  The old wooden gate and the two friendly, square brick pillars on which it had swung were gone; but in their stead rose a wondrous structure of scrolled wrought iron between two splendid granite shafts.

Lewis stood on tiptoe and gazed through the gate, up the driveway, to where Consolation Cottage had once stood.  Through the tepid haze of a beautiful tropical garden he saw a high villa.  It did not look back at him.  It seemed to be watching steadily from its hilltop the spread of the mighty city in the valley below.

Lewis was brought to himself with a start.  Somebody behind him cried out, “O-la!” He turned to find two impatient horses almost on top of him.  A footman was springing from his place beside the coachman to open the gate.

Lewis stepped aside.  In the smart victoria sat a lady alone.  She was dressed in white, and wore a great, black picture-hat.  Lewis glanced at her face.  He recognized the Anglo-Saxon pallor.  Out of the dead-white shone two dark eyes, unnaturally bright.  He raised his hat.

“I beg your pardon,” he began in English.

The gate had swung open.  The horses were plunging on the taut reins.  The lady drew her skirts in at her side and nodded.  Lewis stepped into the carriage.  The horses shot forward and up the drive.

CHAPTER XXXI

“It was the only way,” said the lady as Lewis handed her out of the carriage.  “The horses wouldn’t wait, once the gates were open.  What did you wish to say?”