Then at last, by accident, she heard from a man whom she met at dinner that Van Oudijck was living near Garut. She went to Garut, feeling pleased to be on his track. The people in the hotel were able to direct her to where he lived. She could not decide whether she should first write to him and announce her visit. Something seemed to warn her that, if she did, he would make some excuse and that she would not see him. And she, now that she was on the point of leaving Java for good, wanted to see him, from motives of mingled affection and curiosity. She wished to see for herself how he looked, to get out of him why he had so suddenly sent in his resignation and thrown up his enviable position in life, a position instantly seized by the next man after him, in the great push for promotion. So, next morning, very early, without sending him word, she drove away in a carriage belonging to the hotel. The landlord had explained to the coachman where he was to go. And she drove a very long way, along Lake Lellès, the sombre sacred lake with the two islands containing the age-old tombs of saints, while above it hovered, like a dark cloud of desolation, an ever-circling flock of enormous black bats, flapping their demon wings and screeching their cry of despair, wheeling round and round incessantly: a black, funereal swirl against the infinite blue depths of the ether, as though they, the demons who had once dreaded light, had triumphed and no longer feared the day, because they obscured it with the shadow of their sombre flight. And it was all so oppressive: the sacred lake, the sacred tombs and above them a horde as of black devils in the deep blue ether, because it was as though a part of the mystery of India were being suddenly revealed, no longer hiding itself, a vague, impalpable presence, but actually visible in the sunlight, rousing dismay with its menacing victory.... Eva shuddered; and, as she glanced up timidly, she felt as though the black multitude of screening wings might beat down ... upon her.... But the shadow of death between her and the sun only whirled dizzily around, high above her head, and only uttered its despondent cry of triumph.... She drove on; and the plain of Lellès lay green and smiling before her. And that second of revelation had already ticked past: there was nothing now but the green and blue luxuriance of the Javanese landscape; the mystery was already hidden away among the delicate, waving bamboos or merged in the azure ocean of the sky.