"Reardon’s landing was already dilapidated; I scrambled up it and picked my way to the shore, telling the men to wait there for me without fail, for I didn’t want them straying to the village. Striking the path at the head of the pier, I hurried forward, keeping myself as much as possible in the deep shadow of palm trees that lined the up-hill slope. I wanted to catch this fellow napping, whoever he was, wanted to observe his face in a moment of surprise. Then I should be better able to place him. The air under the trees was thick with the reek of tropic earth; sounds made themselves distinctly heard in the great silence. I advanced up the path noiseless and unseen, and in a few minutes arrived in plain sight of the bungalow. "The little house, with its broad flanking verandahs, stood surrounded by trees and underbrush. It had a neglected appearance; even in the night I could make out how the jungle had closed around it in the two years since Reardon’s departure. The light inside the bungalow was gone; heavy shadows filled the verandahs, so that I couldn’t have seen a person sitting there. I began to wonder whether the tenant had turned in for the night; stepped aside from the path, and started to skirt the house, with the instinct that invariably leads a man to the rear when he’s eavesdropping; and was about to strike across a patch of bright moonlight toward the side porch, when a strange sound broke the intense stillness and knocked me back into the shadow as if by a physical blow. "Someone had begun to play a guitar on the verandah. The next moment a voice came out on the night, soft and suppressed, a voice like an echo, that seemed to lose itself in the silken chamber of the night. Either a baritone or a very deep contralto; but I felt it to be a man’s voice, without understanding why. I listened, but couldn’t hear distinctly. While I listened, I was conscious of an exquisite perfection of emotion. I seemed to stand at the heart of an old and visionary land, the witness of an ancient parable; the voice was the voice of Adam singing the first love song in Eden, and the veiled languorous moon was the same moon that had stirred that song through the untold nights of men. "Suddenly the voice rose and swelled; I caught the words, the tone, the melody.... All at once I remembered—and knew, with a shock of recollection, who it was. The quality of the voice hadn’t changed; the song itself was familiar. I’d heard it often, as he lay on the couch in the New York studio, or sat at the piano in one of his wandering musical moods. It seemed impossible. How could he be here? I choked, in the midst of uttering a low exclamation—must have made quite a fuss. He got up abruptly, breaking off the song; I heard the guitar strike the floor with a hollow clash. "’Who is there?’ he asked softly, as if expecting a visitor from that direction.