The next morning he went to the court of the Consulate, without anything in his hands. The night had been so rough for him that he was uncentred enough to seek the woman for a moment—just to look upon her, to ease off the mighty ache across his chest. He had become very humble from wanting her. Last night he had been touched with the coldness and hatred that seemed close to destroying the attraction between them, but the emptiness and irony of all life without her, had come in the hours following the talk with Bamban. The thing that he had called a taint diminished to one of the minor mysteries of womanhood, and Anna Erivan, brave enough not to quibble about the wonder of their meeting, and of spiritual force to forget her own longing and passion, stood forth with augmented light and lure.
As he waited a mere moment within the gate of the court, it seemed that he would die if she did not come quickly. The pain that he had learned to identify with her in moments of their separation in presence or thought—a pain that began in the pit of his left arm and stretched to the centre of his breast—awakened to burning and agony in that moment before he heard her step. Words were on his lips to say that he loved her, that nothing mattered but that to him, that he wanted to die if he could not have her, that her own terms were his, that he could not take his thoughts much less his presence again from the place where she abode—a rush of confession and revelation altogether unlike the man that others knew or that he had hitherto known himself.
She had been in the Forward Room. He heard the door and her step in the living-room; then at last she came to the door of the court, and all that he could say was:
"Are you all right?"
"Yes."
She looked so white that he was awed by the frailness of her life. He could not speak, and the sense of hanging there, impotent, presently prevailed upon his pride, and he went away. During the day Bamban twice mentioned the town of Wampli, and each time Romney turned away and smiled.
Always when driven to the last ditch, he smiled. One can best survey the humour of the world from the last ditch. And this day moved on, hour by hour, the slowest caravan in the reach of mortal conception—hours to the dusk, deadly, crawling. And when the dusk came on, he went to the court of the Consulate and sat upon a stone by the west wall, and smoked there, waiting for the full night. Once the woman came to the doorway and waved at him. And that night, leaving, he was torn again. As he stretched out on his blankets, Bamban brought a candle.
... Romney suddenly reached for the yellow hand. At the touch of it, a sob came from him, and for an hour he apologised. Still an hour later he awoke, sweating, with a start, dreaming that the laugh had come. Bamban was still sitting by the candle.
"Was that the hyenas?" the American asked.
"No, there has been silence. You were dreaming."