" Her eyes
closed very slowly, as if an extreme weakness had seized her.
In the shock of that moment I reached out to support her, but she
checked my hand. Her gray eyes opened again. A shudder visibly went
over her, as if the night air had suddenly become chill. From the
shelf the two stuffed birds regarded us dolefully, while the dancing
faun, with head thrown back in an attitude of immortal art, laughed
derisively.
"Where is he? I must speak to him," said Miss Stanleigh.
"One might think he were deliberately hiding," I muttered, for I was
at a loss to account for Leavitt's absence.
"Then find him," the girl commanded. I cut short my speculations to
direct Williams to search the hut in the rear of the bungalow, where,
behind bamboo palings, Leavitt's Malay servant maintained an aloof
and mysterious existence. I sat down beside Miss Stanleigh on the
veranda steps to find my hands sooty from the touch of the boards. A
fine volcanic ash was evidently drifting in the air, and now to my
ear, attuned to the profound stillness, the wind bore a faint
humming sound.
"Do you hear that?" I whispered. It was like the far-off murmur of a
gigantic caldron, softly a-boil--a dull vibration that seemed to
reach us through the ground as well as through the air.
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