Under their influence, her appearance improved vastly. Her eyes seemed larger and more lustrous than of yore, her smiling face dimpled provocatively, the curves of her slight figure became a shade more rich and ripe.

Her crescent radiance was reflected in her surroundings. When, with her airy tread, she entered the squalid hut of some sick native, and, setting down her little basket of nourishing soup or cooling jelly, she proceeded to shake up the pillow and to lave the fevered brow, the stricken black (the motion of whose rolling eyes, relative to that of his rolling head, it would take four pages of mathematical symbols, or one line of poetry, to describe) would address her now as B’hlongba instead of, as hitherto, B’tongba. At the sound of that dear epithet she would lay her finger on her lips and shake her head at the speaker in smiling reproof, but she could not resist treasuring in her breast the thought that her new status was mirrored, as in a japanned coal scuttle, thus exaggeratedly in the simple sincerity of the blacks.

Mr. Fatigay provided, also, further iridescent materials for the dream palace which thus rose about his gentle pet, in that, now his return to England was decided upon, he began, for certain purposes of his own, to school her in graces of deportment and in the manners and customs of civilized society. An easy carriage and an upright bearing were now imparted to the chimp, and instruction also in the proper method of entering a room, proffering cakes and tea cups, and making a curtsey. So meticulous was the schoolmaster in his training of her in this last respect, that poor Emily began to wonder if she was to be presented at Court, an idea which she would have laughingly dismissed as presumptuous to the point of absurdity, but for a sentence which she read at about that time, which said: “In England the Primate takes precedence of all but Royal Dukes.”

The society paper in which these words appeared contained several photographs of personages prominent at Court, and these, combined with its axiom, frequently repeated in one form or another, that nothing was more to be envied than direct descent from an ancient stock, however barbarous, strongly supported the misinterpretation which the innocent creature, unacquainted with the hierarchy of the Church, placed upon the words. She saw herself as one of ‘this year’s brides’, and in order that she might be fitted to maintain her husband’s dignity in such a position, she attended with her utmost concentration on his instruction.

Why did she not now reveal her talents to Mr. Fatigay? From this delicate motive: so that when he met her, barefooted as it were, at the altar, and there bestowed upon her apparent nothingness and poverty the right to clothe herself henceforth in his material and mental grandeur, she might then surprise and gratify him by revealing that she was not altogether so dowerless as he had supposed, since, though she came to him bare of gold and jewels and securities, she brought with her the treasure of a well-stocked mind, a possession which, all the books said, was infinitely to be preferred.

And as she sat rapt in the contemplation of that moment, she heard him say:

“Come, Emily, shoulders back, please. You mustn’t sit all hunched up like that, you know. That would never do in the position you are going to hold in England.”

And shortly after, he set the gramophone to work (“What’ll I Do?” the song was) and, advancing towards her, he raised her by the hand, and motioned her to follow his movements in sinuous response to the music.

“What’ll I do

When you

Are far

A-way,

And I

Feel bloo?

What’ll I do?”

One, two, three. One, two, three.

The dolorous words floated off, winged with the poignant notes of the saxophone, blue into the blue darkness about the veranda. From the trees on the slope below, the strain was echoed, more poignantly yet, in a succession of deep, not unmelodious howls.

“That,” thought the chimp, pursing her lips, “must be Henry.”

It was the most persistent of her admirers in her sylvan days to whom she had given this name, he who haunted the foamy tree beneath her bedroom window.

The kindest of hearts, when happy in devotion to one being, may be inclined to rate a hopeless passion, bestowed on itself, as over-shallow and too easily compensated. Modesty, forbidding too clear a realization of one’s power to arouse such a feeling, plays a great part in this, and a still greater perhaps is played by the desire to imagine the whole world as happy as oneself. Emily, prompted thus, took advantage of their next circuit of the dinner table, and, taking a banana from the dessert dish, she flung it in a graceful arc over the rails, with much the careless movement of a dancing film actress disposing of her cigarette ash. For a moment the embittered harmony was stilled. Then, humming like an angry insect, the skin of the banana shot across the veranda, and crashed upon a pane in the window just behind their heads.

“Good God!” said Mr. Fatigay. “What was that? A bat?”

And the gramophone needle scratched and scraped fretfully as the melodious sorrow came to its end.

Emily stepped aside as he hurried to lift it from the record, and, picking up the banana skin, she dropped it flatly over the balcony.

All in a moment a cloud had veiled the moon. Something lay chill at Emily’s heart. Had she sinned against love, she wondered wistfully, in the slighting attempt to silence even its intrusive vehicle by the carelessly flung fruit? Though this had not altogether been rejected, something ugly had crept into the Eden of her inner life, and ugliness, where all else was tranquil beauty, was in itself foreboding.

Next day dawned hot and blue, and the passing mood was forgotten. After lunch Mr. Fatigay cried out for his horse, and, smiling at Emily, he said:

“I’m going to ride down to meet the mail boat. There may be a letter for me. You, Emily, must stay at home, as it is such a long way for the horse. I shall be back in time for dinner.”

When he was out of sight, Emily turned from the window, and began to wonder how best she might employ her time till evening. Suddenly she smiled: An idea had come into her head. She would devote the long hours of waiting to the practice of a branch of her reading which hitherto had been sadly neglected: the deciphering of manuscript. This, she felt, would be of essential importance in the social life that lay before her.

Sauntering across to her protector’s bureau, she opened the blotter which lay upon it, and took up some sheets of letter paper at which Mr. Fatigay had been busy all the morning.