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So that the doctor might be free for technical talks, Charles spent hours in the hospital and dispensary. He played a neat game of tennis on hurriedly-cropped grass, and paddled a fast canoe up-river, but he was happiest on the veranda, sitting with a weak whisky at his side and some other person near by. His nature was neither solitary nor introspective.

He admired the doctor and Nurse Briggs and found relaxation and entertainment in Phil. Quite a rich little community, he thought. No passengers here.

He would have liked to stay longer and delve more thoroughly into the phenomenon of the good-looking, spirited girl tucked away in this festering clearing in the coastal forest.

The yacht upon whose deck he had slept on the trip down to Goanda had, immediately upon disembarking him, proceeded on its voyage. To get back to his Institute, Charles would have to travel inland—sixty miles up the river to the jungle highway, where he could pick up a jeep which his assistant was sending.

“And then back to the test tube and fluoroscope,” he said to Phil. “I’ve been on leave a month and it seems like two years.”

“I hope we’ll meet again,” she said frankly.

“So do I.” He shook her hand and gave her the quiet smile which she was coming to know. “Don’t forget us if you tire of Goanda. We can’t get enough assistants, and we wouldn’t expect more than six hours’ light work out of you daily. Goodbye . . . Phil.”

“Goodbye, Charles.”

It was strange for the loaded canoe to disappear inland instead of towards the sea. Phil wandered back to her room to finish her lunch and read a chapter of the novel he had passed on to her. By lunchtime next day, when she finished the book, Charles Metcalfe’s imprint had faded. He meant hardly more than the tax collector who had called last month for the removal of his appendix. In fact, she omitted to tell Julian that they had had a visitor.

Julian was becoming more and more immersed in the plantation. With three keen overseers he was expanding the acreage of the cleared and newly-planted land by many square miles.

“We’re half-way up the mountain-side and at one point have touched the mission grounds,” he said.

“Will you encircle the mission?”

“Not for some time. I’m waiting for it to close down.”

“Are there signs?”

“The old chap’s dope-crazy, and Sister Harrington has had to pack up. The climate’s got her.”

“Poor thing,” she said with pity. “She chose a frightful mode of living.”

“Yes.” He spoke slowly, as if weighing up whether to leave it there. Offhandedly he tacked on: “I went up to fetch her to the boat. I hadn’t seen her for many months and the change in her sickened me. She was a yellow skeleton.”

Phil made a sound of horror and compassion.

Julian went on: “I found out that she had worked in the tropics for eleven years without a break. She hasn’t had Nurse Briggs’ consolation.” He grinned faintly at her startled expression, and amended, “Not in recent years, anyway.”

“How did you know about Nurse Briggs and the doctor?”

“My sweet child,” he teased, “they’re a man and a woman, and equatorial nights are twelve hours long all the year round. Maybe neither would choose the other from a crowd, but”—a shrug—“why deny yourself what’s there for the taking?”

She looked at him queerly—they were at the bay again —and scooped a palmful of grey sand. “So that’s the masculine attitude,” she said in flat tones.

“If you have the sanity and common sense of a doctor,” he agreed. “But other mortals confuse the issue by insisting that the woman have bright streaks in her hair and hazel eyes and a voice that’s husky and slurs the consonants.”

Phil was won over. She did not pause to reflect that Julian’s sanity and common sense were probably equal to those of the most cold-blooded surgeon.

Presently she said: “It must be a refreshing sight—row upon row of tiny oil-palms on the mountain slopes. Couldn’t I come, Julian—just for a week?”

“You’d only want to stay on,” he replied, without expression.

“Would that matter so very much—now?”

“I’ve explained why I won’t have you on the island.” His head turned abruptly seawards. “The set-up has changed. Matt has a new log house near mine in the clearing, and the overseers occupy the three bungalows on the cliff.”

“All right,” she managed after a moment. “Tell me more about the trees.”

He nipped her bare knee. “The Valeira soil is the richest I’ve ever struck. Did I tell you we’ve started a tropical orchard for our own needs: pineapples, pawpaws, avocados, mangoes, and a few others? When the windbreaks are high enough to give shade I shall plant oranges and lemons.”

“It takes years for fruit trees to bear.”

“We ought to get a showing three years from now.”

Three years from now. Phil was tempted to ask: “Shall I still be here, Julian, wading through the days and coming alive on Friday evening? Is that what you’re offering me?”

Such an arrangement as theirs couldn’t hold together for so long. From the viewpoint of a man who had forced himself to a celibate existence in hot places it must be convenient to say little, to have a woman of his own thirty miles away across the water. At present he was giving her two days a week, but as the plantation widened might not his time with her shrink to one day, or even less? Grimly ironical came the picture of Julian sparing her an hour or two once a fortnight in the interests of his health and peace of mind. She shivered, and groped for his hand. It was there, as warm and compelling as his mouth in the curve of her neck.

Oddly, her doubts were strongest when Julian was close. Perhaps it was only in his aura that she could be positively, tinglingly awake, both to ecstasy and its potential dwindling to a trickle of bitter pleasure. She thought, if it ever ends let it break off clean; anything else would be long-drawn death.

There happened a week-end when Julian neither appeared at the river mouth nor sent a message. Two days of stark agony, followed by five more of desperate, nerve-shaking hope. On Friday she was pitifully cautious. No clean dress; no chasing down to the river bend.

At tea on the hospital veranda, Nurse Briggs talked wearily, in her slightly common voice, about cutting out some overalls from the never-failing bale of white cotton, and getting the village women to hem new sheets. Phil could not listen. Her tongue had the appalling taste of anxiety and too many cigarettes.

She looked at her watch. If he was coming he had just about reached the bend; in five minutes he would jump on to the landing-stage. She couldn’t go out; not, anyway, till his voice sounded. If the minutes ticked silently by till dusk, she would have saved herself the shattering experience of last Friday.

Then, somehow, she was out on the beaten earth path, scanning the fifty yards of cleared bank with the stage in the middle. And when the boat pushed from the trees and veered she ran, her heart hot in her throat. She was actually on the planks, extending two hands when he landed.

“I missed you at the bend,” he said.

“After last week I was scared. Oh, Julian!”

He softened. “Sorry about that. I picked up a germ and was on my back for three days. Matt had a touch of it, too. Have you kept well?”

Phil nodded. She had no rights where he was concerned; she could not demand to know if he were ill. At that moment she would have liked to lean her weight against him, and weep.

THE sewing party had collected at the foot of the baobab tree. They sat between the great roots and leaned their backs on them. Their skirts, voluminous from waist to ankle, spread over the dust so that the materials they sewed should be kept spotless. Today, all had bodices, or at least a wide band of coloured cotton tight under the armpits; none would have ventured so near the hospital half-clad.

Phil, having just had a bath in her bedroom, was luxuriously drinking a cup of tea on her balcony wrapped in a print house-gown she had recently made for herself. She heard the babble and the chugging machine, and took quiet delight in the colourful group.

She became aware of a boy patiently awaiting her attention on the other side of the balcony wall. He thrust at her a letter.

“From white master, please.”

With a bump of the heart Phil recognized the writing. Swiftly she tore the flap and extracted the pencilled note.

Don't be alarmed
,
my sweet
.
I have to go to Lagos, and have stopped here to let you know
.
If it's convenient
,
come to the bay for half an hour
.
The boy will bring you
.

If it’s convenient!

Phil said, “Wait!” and hastened into her room to slough the wrap and drag on a dress.

The boy loped ahead to the bend of the river. He had apparently learned well his instructions, for a white dinghy, much too grand and clean to belong to a freighter, was pulled well under the trees out of sight of a passing canoe. Deftly he poled away from the reeds and set the boat speeding towards the headland.

The river opened, and between the leaning trees Phil glimpsed a yacht, pale and sleek as those which had passed close to Valeira from Lisbon. Sea chipped at the dinghy’s side, a tide so strong that the boy grunted with the effort of rounding the headland and pulling up through the waves to the silt bar where Julian bent, ready to lift Phil to a foothold among the mangrove roots.

He said: “The sea’s risen since I sent the note, but I’m glad you made it. Watch your feet—it’s slimy as hell.”

He half carried her along the reef and over the bar to a spot they both knew, which was shut in by bush.

“You didn’t mind my not coming in the boat to fetch you?” he asked, after they’d tossed. “If I’d been seen it would have meant tedious explanations. I have to be away again before dark.”

“In that?” Phil indicated the yacht.

“Yes, chipper, isn’t she? The property of one of the company directors. I told you a couple of weeks ago that a man was due to call on us at the island. He isn’t coming, after all. By the time he reached Nigeria his wife had had enough. She’s gone home by liner, but he, having travelled so far, would like a talk with me.”

“So he sent the yacht. How long will you be gone, Julian?”

“About five days. I shall return in a coaster, and try to drop off here on my way back, possibly next Tuesday. Don’t reckon on it, though. Nothing’s dependable in these waters. But in any event I’ll make the crossing as usual the following Friday.”

She stood with her shoulder against his chest, surveying the superb craft which, even at anchor, rode the waves sweetly, with grace.

“She’s fitted up like a roadhouse,” he said. “Ten cabins, a lounge, a bar and a billiards room. Tennis and dancing on deck.”

“Let me go aboard?” she pleaded.

‘There isn’t time. Besides,” with a grin, “you might wheedle the captain to take you along.”

She clutched the sleeves of his jacket and searched his eyes. “Couldn’t it be done, Julian? Lagos isn’t the island. You . . . did take me there once.” .

The reference was an error. She sensed it instantly in the way he stiffened, the deliberate intake of breath before he answered:

“This is hardly the moment to start a private debate. I’m beginning to wish I’d merely had a message delivered to you and sailed on. Don’t!” as she trembled. “What a way to behave just now! I have to leave you in a few minutes.”

His tone sobered and chilled her. She moved from the circle of his arms.

“I’m sorry. I’ve always been a little inconvenient in my desires, haven’t I? You think I ought to be grateful for the chance of waiting for you to come to me at Goanda. Well, gratitude grows stale, and emotions tend to go ragged when they’re overworked. You’re selfish, Julian.”

“I admit it,” he said through his teeth. “And now will you be quiet and save your accusations till I get back!”

She loved and hated him. Recklessly, she demanded, “What will you do . . . serve me with a notice of annulment?”

Roughly, he jerked her round. “It’s a bit late for that. Divorce is the word, but I’m not discussing it in anger or in haste.”

“Of course not. You never did anything without drawing up a blueprint first. I’m aware that it’s rotten and womanish to hurl this kind of thing at you when you’re on the point of leaving, but I can’t help it. If you wanted to you could take me with you to Lagos.” She felt pain drawing tight in her throat. “You won’t take me because the yacht will be met and you’d have to explain me as your wife ... or something else.”

His tanned cheekbones had darkened. In a cold and furious voice he said: “How right you are. Is it brutal of me to remind you that the sun has gone down and I’m expected to return to the yacht?”

As she turned he took the lead and grasped her hand with bone-cracking cruelty, hauling her after him between the shadowy mangroves, forcing her to move faster and faster over the slippery, mud-plastered roots. Once she floundered down into the silt and he had to crouch and drag her free. His eyes came close, a stony blue, and she wished he had left her to sink right under.

He got into the boat with her and barked at the boy to move fast. Big seas carried them into the river and the boy’s rhythmic movements did the rest. Trees closed in, the branches chittering with homing birds. Phil sat and looked at the evil mouths in the bank between the buttressed boles, caverns hollowed by storm waters and latticed with vine. Liana flowers, red as the heart’s blood, starred the dark foliage as though pasted there.

They were at the bend.

“I’ll go with you through the trees,” said Julian.

The path was narrow and night things were flying. As they approached near enough to see the lights of the hospital through the branches he stopped and examined the white blur of her face.

“I guess we’ve come to the end of the first phase,” he said. “I hoped it would last longer, but you’re too young and temperamental. I don’t mean that viciously—it’s simply a fact that we can’t ignore. We were happy enough last weekend and if we’re sensible we’ll be happy again, though perhaps not in quite the same way. Maybe it’s as well that I can’t stay this evening. There’s nothing like time for giving a quarrel its true perspective.”