The Gorgeous Isle

On the following evening there was so much more dancing than usual--a number of officers had come over from St. Kitts--that the saloon was deserted by the young people, and at the height of the impromptu ball Anne found herself alone near one of the open windows. The older people were intent upon cards. Anne, who had grown bolder since her first appearance in the world, now close upon three weeks ago, obeyed an impulse to step through the window, descended the terrace and walked along the beach. She could have gone to her room and found the solitude she craved, but she wanted movement, and the night was so beautiful that it called to her irresistibly. The moon was at the full, she could see the blue of the sea under its crystal flood. The blades of the palm trees glittered like sinister weapons unsheathed. She could outline every leaf of palm, cocoanut, and banana that fringed the shore. The nightingales ceased their warbling and she heard that other and still more enchanting music of a tropic night, the tiny ringing of a million silver bells. What fairy-like creature of the insect world gave out this lovely music she was at no pains to discover. It was enough that it was, and she had leaned out of her window many a night and wondered why Byam Warner had never sung its music in his verse.

Byam Warner! How--how was she to think of him? Her overthrown ideals no longer even interested her, belonging as they did to some far off time when she had not come herself to dream upon these ravishing shores. And now the surrender of the past three weeks had been far more rudely disturbed. Would even Nevis dominate again? Must not such a man, even in his ruin, cast his shadow over any scene of which he was a part? And of Nevis he was a part! She had been able to disassociate them only until he stood before her, quick. And now she should see him, talk to him every day, possibly receive his devotions, for there was no doubt that he admired her as the antithesis of all to which he had been accustomed from birth; unquestionably she must take her part in his redemption. The thought thrilled her, and she paused a moment looking out over the water. Faded, even repellent, as that husk was, not only was his genius so far unimpaired, but she believed that she had caught a glimpse of a great soul dwelling apart in that polluted tenement. From the latter she shrank with all the aversion of uncontaminated girlhood, but she felt that she owed it to her intellect to recognise the separateness of those highest faculties possessed by the few, from the flesh they were forced to carry in common with the aborigines. And it seemed almost incredible that his life had not swamped, mired, smothered all that was lofty and beautiful in that inner citadel; her feminine curiosity impelled her to discover if this really were so, or if he had merely retained a trick of expression.