Next morning, Packard, the dominant man, thought he noticed a change in the manner of Kineia. Lygon’s wife up to this had held aloof from him; her manner seemed more friendly and inviting this morning. Then he felt sure. He knew himself to be the better man, and Kineia had recognized the fact.
He almost forgot Lygon and all his plans about him in this new interest that had suddenly come into his life.
He had never seen any one so beautiful as Kineia, and his evil mind was not a whit less evil because of the esthetic strain in it. He could admire beauty, this man, the beauty of a sunrise or the beauty of a woman—anything but the beauty of goodness.
He went off to his work that morning carrying the picture of Kineia with him, and it held him while he superintended the business of loading the copra on board.
Brown, the mate, who was helping in the work, wondered what had come to Packard making him so silent and abstracted, he who had been so full of life and energy the day before.
If you had told him that Packard was thinking of Kineia, he would have laughed with a certain amount of joy at the cold douche surely being prepared for him by that beauty.
But Brown knew nothing of the tangle of affairs or what native blood can do under certain temptations.
Packard returning next evening found Lygon incapable of coming to dinner. During the last few days Lygon had been taking gin to soothe his mind; to-night he was tipsy, and as he and Kineia dined opposite one another his snoring came distinctly from the room above.
“My husband is ill,” said Kineia, with a little movement of disgust. They talked in low tones during the meal and when dinner was over, Packard, lighting a cigar in the veranda, saw Kineia in the lamplit room going to a box that stood on a little table by the lamp stand. She took something from it and placed whatever it was in her pocket. Then she came out in the veranda. There was in her face something reckless, crafty, and subtle, as though the evil spirit of the gin that had poisoned Lygon were poisoning her, too.
“What was that you put in your pocket?” asked Packard, for want of something better to say.