“The rafflesia,” she lisped, and nodded.
And as he moved to get a nearer view she caught him by the arm.
“Be careful,” she added, and warned him with a glance.
But Tancred was not one to fear the immobile; he moved yet nearer to it, the girl hovering at his side. And as he moved there came to greet him a heavy, sullen odor, a smell like to that of an acid burning and blent with rose.
“The heart is poisonous,” the girl continued; “don’t touch it without gloves.”
The admonition, however, was unnecessary. Tancred was motionless with surprise. Before him was a flower, its petals of such consistency and of such unpleasant hue that they resembled huge slabs of uncooked veal. The chalice was deep enough to hold two gallons of liquid, the pistil was red, and the supporting stem was gnarled and irruptive with excrescences. In appearance it suggested an obese and giant lily, grown in a nightmare and watered with blood. It was hideous yet fascinating, as monstrosity ever is. And as Tancred stared, a page of forgotten botany turned in his mind, and he remembered that he had read of this plant, which Sumatra alone produces, and in whose pistil lurks a poison swifter than the cantarella of the Borgias, deadlier than the essences of Locuste.
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 buttonhole, 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.
“You are to be with us some time, are you not?” Liance asked.
“No, a day or two at the most. When the next steamer goes, so must I.”
“Could you not stay longer?” She stopped and looked at him, the little basket swaying to and fro.
“I should like to, really I should like to very much,” he replied. The episode with Mrs. Lyeth was still oppressing him, and in answer to the oppression he added aloud, “But perhaps it is better I should not.”
Liance lowered her eyes, and with the point of her shoe tormented a tuft of grass.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because—well, because I feel an intruder.”
The girl raised her eyes at once, her lips quivered.
“You are wrong, so wrong.”
And then, curiously enough, as such things happen, Tancred—who was not a bit stupider than the rest of us—felt an oracle within him. It was more than probable, he told himself, that widow and maid, being nearly of an age, had, in their Sumatran idleness, become the fastest friends; and at once, with that logic which is peculiar to those that love, he decided that, being friends, they must be confidantes as well, and he concluded that two fair heads had come together and determined he should remain. That woman is variable, was a song he knew by heart, and he also knew that woman is apt to do one thing and mean another—to dismiss, for instance, the very man whom she wishes most at her feet.
These ruminations, however long in the telling, did not in reality outlast a moment’s space. It was all very clear to him now, and his blood pulsed quickly.
“If you tell me so, I must indeed be wrong,” he answered. “And let me add,” he continued, impetuously, “it is a boon to know it.”
To his face a flush had come, and his eyes were eager. He had never been accounted anything else than good-looking, but now he was attractive as well.
“You will not be in haste to go, then?”
“In haste to go—” His face completed the sentence. “Tell her from me,” he was about to say, when from the girl’s loosening fingers the basket fell; she drooped like a flower, her eyes half closed, and he had but the time to hold out his arm when she sank unconscious on it.
The grass seemed an inviting couch, and very gently he let her from him. “It is the heat,” he reflected, and kneeling at her side he took her small hand and beat it with his own. “What shall I do?” he wondered. Her cheeks were colorless, though her lips were red, and as, in his perplexity, he gazed at them, he saw them move. “Kiss me,” they seemed to say. Her eyes opened and she smiled.
And still he stared. “Merciful heaven!” he thought; “she thinks I am in love with her;” and feigning that the invitation had passed unheard he sprang to his feet.
“Help me,” she murmured, smiling still; and as he bent again to aid her, before him in
