The odor, more pungent now, drove him back a step. At the moment it seemed to carry with it a whiff of that atmosphere of creosote and tooth-wash which is peculiar to the dentist's chair. And slaughtering another mosquito, he moved yet further away.
"What do you think of it?" asked Liance.
"It would hardly do for the button-hole, would it?" he answered.
The girl nodded appreciatively. Evidently she was of the same mind as he.
"There are few of them here," she continued. "This is the only one in Siak, but back there," and she pointed to the mountains, "they are plentiful. When a Malay prepares for war he slashes the pistil with his kriss. The wound that that kriss makes is death."
"H'm," mused Tancred, with an uncomfortable shrug, "if I happened to fall out with a Malay—"
"Don't."
The monosyllable fell from her like a stone.
"I will do my best," he said.
She turned again and led him back through the coppice. The air was sultrier than ever, heavy with fragrance and enervating with forebodings of a storm. And now, as the girl preceded him, her step seemed more listless than before. She is tired, he reflected. These noons are fierce.