Something was wrong, he concluded.  He would never have argued on similar lines a short time ago.  This downright sympathy with sinners, what did it portend?  Did it betray a lapse from his old-established principles, a waning of his respect for traditional morality?  Was he becoming a sinner himself?

Thomas—­the doubting apostle.  He wondered whether there was anything in a name.

Then he called to mind how he had approved—­yes, almost approved—­of Don Francesco’s deplorable act of familiarity towards the little serving maid.  An absurdly small matter, but symptomatic.  Things like that had happened in Africa lately.  He remembered various instances where he had intervened on behalf of the natives, despite the murmured protests of the missionaries.  They were such laughing, good-natured animals—­so fine and healthy!  What was it, this excessive love of erring humanity, and whither trending?  Mr. Heard began to vex his soul to stray about in a maze of doubts.  It was so miserably complex, this old, old problem of right and wrong; so unreasonably many-sided.  Anon, he pulled himself together with characteristic bluntness.

“The whole question,” he concluded, “is plain as a pikestaff.  Am I becoming more of a Christian, or less?”

As though to learn an answer to his riddle he gazed fro he eyrie over the wide horizon, upon leagues of sea rising upward to blend their essence, under the magic touch of evening, with the purple dome overhead.

The elements, as is their wont upon such occasions, gave forth no clear reply.

None the less, while the moist south wind, shorn of the sting of midday, relaxed his pores and passed over his cheek like a warm caress, there exhaled from those limitless spaces a sense of joyous amplitude—­of freedom and exhilaration.

CHAPTER XVIII

And now, in the sunlit hour of dawn, he was bathing again.  An excellent habit.  It did him good, this physical contact with nature.  Africa had weakened his constitution.  Nepenthe made him feel younger once more—­capable of fun and mischief.  The muscles were acquiring a fresh tone, that old zest of life was coming back to him.  His health, without a shadow of doubt, had greatly improved.

While disporting himself in amphibious joy among the tepid waves he seemed to cast off that sense of unease which had pursued him of late.  It was good to inhale the harsh salty savour—­to submit himself to these calming voices—­to float, like a careless Leviathan, in the blue immensity; good to be alive, simply alive.

Another hot and clammy day was in store for the island.  No matter.  This sirocco, of which older inhabitants might well complain, had so far exerted no baleful influence upon him.  Quite the reverse.  Under its tender moistening touch his frame, desiccated in the tropics, seemed to open out, even as a withered flower uncloses its petals in water.  In Africa all this thoughts and energies had been concentrated upon a single point.  Here he expanded.  New interests, new sensations, seemed to lie in wait for him.  Never had he felt so alert, so responsive to spiritual impressions, so appreciative of natural beauty.