The fact sent Le Breton to the hotel that evening for an interview with the verse-maker.
The place was a blaze of light and a crash of music. In the big patio the usual bi-weekly dance was taking place, and a crowd of people disported themselves to the strains of a ragtime band.
Le Breton made a striking figure in evening clothes, and more than one woman glanced at him with invitation. He took no notice of them. All he wanted was a slim girl with a mop of short, dancing, golden curls. The room was so crowded that he could get no glimpse of his quarry, although he altered his point of view several times.
At the end of half an hour he decided to take a turn round the grounds.
The garden was soft with moonlight, filled with a misty brightness, and the palms hung limp and sighing. From beyond the wall came the murmur of the sea. Syringa and roses filled the night with perfume. At one spot a fountain sang sweetly to itself.
There Le Breton lingered with the moonlight and the ebony shadows, the tropical trees sighing languorously around him.
As he waited there, deep in some reverie of his own, the sound of footsteps reached him. Then, from an adjacent path, voices talking in English—a man's thick, low, and protesting, then a girl's clear and indignant.
"When did I encourage you?" she asked, her voice raised in righteous anger. "Once you brought me a cup of tea I didn't want. Twice you mixed my books and papers with somebody else's. I was three times your partner at Bridge, and that wasn't any fault of mine. I defy you to mention more encouragement than that. Go to your woman with red hair, and don't talk nonsense to me."
The man's voice came again. Then there was a little cry of anger and the sound of a struggle.
The girl's voice brought Le Breton out of his reverie. He knew it, although he could not follow a quarter of what was said. But the little cry and the subsequent scuffle sent him quickly in that direction.