In the cooler hours vivid flashes of orange and black, or black and red, or turquoise blue and green, or white flit across from tree to tree; parrots chatter, crows scream, and the brain-fever bird soothes or irritates you according to your mood, and you tap your fingers on the table in time to the metallic anvil cry of the coppersmith bird, until a tiger-ant or some such voracious insect claims your undivided attention.

In the heat of noon the only sounds to break the intense stillness are the metallic anvil cry of the aforesaid coppersmith bird, and the never-ceasing call of his brain-fever brother.

Except for your own there is no movement whatever—­the voracious insect is always with you.

Quite alone in the bungalow, with her back to the open bedroom, Leonie sat undisturbed, with her eyes fixed unseeingly upon the tree-lined road, and a torrent of disconnected thought swirling through her mind.

Exactly what she was doing, and why she was doing it, she had no idea; she only knew that do it she must, and was content to let it rest.

Programme or plan she had none, only an intolerable desire to get to the ruined temple in the jungle.

For what?

She had no notion!  She had to get there quickly, that was all she knew.

She sat on, with her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands, without stirring; in fact you would have sworn she was asleep so still was she in the silence broken only by the two birds.

She could see the car a little way down the road awaiting her, with the driver curled up sound asleep beside it at the foot of a tree; the bearer asleep too somewhere, she surmised hazily, as the sound of the packing of the hamper had altogether ceased.

And then something, instinct maybe, or whatever you like to label the incorporeal look-out in our psychological crow’s nest, whispered to her that it might be wise if she awoke to her surroundings.

There had not been a sound, nevertheless she felt that somebody stood quite near to her.

She did not move her head, but her eyes flashed quickly to right and left, and she frowned ever so slightly when she remembered that her revolver had been left behind in Calcutta, safely tucked away at the bottom of her dressing-case.

As is the usual way when a revolver is owned by woman.

Nothing stirred except the little curls on the nape of her neck, which quivered when she shivered involuntarily.

It happens every day in India!  The land where curtains take the place of wooden doors, and a deferential servant on noiseless, unshod feet glides into your chamber unannounced, and stands patiently behind you until it pleases your august self to turn and acknowledge his humble presence.

That’s what you think, anyway.

And it takes quite a time to become accustomed to the noiselessness of this proceeding, and to control the start which gives you away completely.