"Not yet," Julian called down in answer to the other's remark, "though I am going directly. Only it is so hot. I hope I am not disturbing the house."
"Not at all. Do what you like. We often sit here till long after midnight, since it is the only cool time of the twenty-four hours. Will you come down again and join us?"
"No, if you'll excuse me. I'll take a turn or two here and then go to bed."
Whereon as he spoke, he began to walk up and down the balcony.
It ran (as has been said of the lower one on which Sebastian and Madame Carmaux were seated) round the whole of the house, so that, had Julian desired to do so, he could have commenced a tour of the building which, by being continued, would eventually have brought him back to the spot where he now was. He contented himself, however, with commencing to walk towards the right-hand corner of the great rambling mansion, proceeding as far upon it as led to where the balcony turned at the angle, then, after a glance down its--at that place--darkened length, he retraced his steps, meaning to proceed to the opposite or left-hand corner.
Doing so, however, and coming thus in front of his bedroom window, from which, since the blind was up, the light of his lamp streamed out on to the broad wooden floor of the balcony, he saw lying at his feet a small object which formed a patch of colour on the dark boards. A patch which was of a pale roseate hue, the thing being, indeed, a little spray, now dry and faded, of the oleander flower. And he knew, felt sure, where he had seen that spray before.
"I know now," he said to himself, "who turned the slat--who stood outside my window looking in on me."
Picking up the withered thing, he, nevertheless, continued his stroll along the balcony until he arrived at the left angle of the house, when he was able to glance down the whole of that side of it, this being as much in the dark and unrelieved by any light from within as the corresponding right side had been. Unrelieved, that is, by any light except the gleam of the great stars which here glisten with an incandescent whiteness; and in that gleam he saw sitting on the floor of the balcony--her back against the wall, her arms over her knees and her head sunk on those arms--the half-caste girl, Zara, the croupier of the gambling-table to which Sebastian had supplied the "bank" that morning at All Pines.
"You have dropped this flower from your hair," he said, tossing it lightly down to her, while she turned up her dark, dusky eyes at him and, picking up the withered spray, tossed it in her turn contemptuously over the balcony. But she said nothing and, a moment later, let her head droop once more towards her arms.
"Do you pass the night here?" he said now. "Surely it is not wholesome to keep out in open air like this."