Here were all the vivid traces of her passage, but where was she? Loneliness and the lack of occupation oppressed him. He lounged away from the writing-table, out into the wide passage which ran all round the central court. He paused there, his hands in his pockets, and called again,-- 'Eve!' 'Eve!' the echoing passage answered startlingly. Presently another more tangible voice came to him as he stood staring disconsolately through the windows into the court. 'Were you calling Mith Eve, Mathter Julian? The'th rethting. Thall I tell her?' He was pleased to see Nana, fat, stayless, slipshod, slovenly, benevolent. He kissed her, and told her she was fatter than ever. 'Glad I've come back, Nannie?' 'Why, yeth, thurely, Mathter Julian.' Nana's demonstrations were always restrained, respectful. She habitually boasted that although life in the easy South might have induced her to relax her severity towards her figure, she had never allowed it to impair her manners. 'Can I go up to Eve's room, Nannie?' 'I thuppoth tho, my dear.' 'Nannie, you know, you ought to be an old negress.' 'Why, dear Lord! me black?' 'Yes; you'd be ever so much more suitable.' He ran off to Eve's room upstairs, laughing, boyish again after his boredom and irritability. He had been in Eve's room many times before, but with his fingers on the door handle he paused. Again that strange vexation at her years had seized him. He knocked. Inside, the room was very dim; the furniture bulked large in the shadows. Scent, dusk, luxury lapped round him like warm water. He had an impression of soft, scattered garments, deep mirrors, chosen books, and many little bottles. Suddenly he was appalled by the insolence of his own intrusion--an unbeliever bursting into a shrine. He stood silent by the door. He heard a drowsy voice singing in a murmur an absurd childish rhyme,-- 'Il était noir comme un corbeau, Ali, Ali, Ali, Alo, Macachebono, La Roustah, la Mougah, la Roustah, la Mougah, Allah! 'Il était de bonne famille, Sa mère élevait des chameaux, Macachebono....' He discerned the bed, the filmy veils of the muslin mosquito curtains, falling apart from a baldaquin. The lazy voice, after a moment of silence, queried,-- 'Nana?' It was with an effort that he brought himself to utter,-- 'No; Julian.' With an upheaval of sheets he heard her sit upright in bed, and her exclamation,-- 'Who said you might come in here?' At that he laughed, quite naturally. 'Why not? I was bored. May I come and talk to you?' He came round the corner of the screen and saw her sitting up, her hair tumbled and dark, her face indistinct, her shoulders emerging white from a foam of lace. He sat down on the edge of her bed, the details of the room emerging slowly from the darkness; and she herself becoming more distinct as she watched him, her shadowy eyes half sarcastic, half resentful. 'Sybarite!' he said.