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On Sundays a houseboy climbed the iron staircase and brought her meals to the balcony. She dozed through the heat of the day, read a little and frequently ended up at a card table with the Coombs. This Sunday she had managed a bathe—not in the sea, for Port Andrew had no sweet lagoon with palms leaning over it—but at the private pool used by the Government officials and their wives. Charles had taken her there and given her a light lunch afterwards, and now she was back on her balcony, perspiring again, but fresher for the sensation of having freed her limbs and talked with jolly people.

She heard the slam of a car door. Not the jeep’s; she couldn’t have missed its clatter up the drive. The Coombs must be entertaining today. She adjusted her cushion and attempted to slide into the narcotic mood of her novel.

A step on the iron stairs. The boy was early with tea today. She glanced over the edge of her book, saw the rising head of Sonya Levalle and felt the shrinking of distaste and apprehension.

Sonya, dark, observant and vicious with jealousy, recognized the expression of consternation and veiled astonishment.

“You are surprised to see me, Miss Crane?”

“Well, naturally, but do sit down.”

Sonya threw off the scarf and smoothed the black silk hair. Her rings scintillated. “You have the airiest room in the building, Miss Crane.”

“Yes. I’m very fortunate.”

“This was my husband’s room when we lived here. Although he had passed much of his life in India, he was unhappy in the heat. I insisted that he have this room. Charles has told you about my husband?”

“A little. I’m sure he was a great man.”

“A great scientist and a gentleman. My father, who was an officer of the French Army at Pondicherry, had tremendous affection for Armand. My mother, I regret to say, did not live to meet my husband. She died in Paris when I was young. My grandparents did not approve of my father taking me to India, but how thankful I am that he did.” It streamed out like a rehearsed passage in a play. Sonya had recited it so often that she believed it herself.

“You have had an exciting life, Madame,” said Phil.

“My life—for myself—is only just beginning,” came the sharp retort. “For ten years I dedicated myself to Armand Levalle and his work. Next time I will marry purely for love.”

Phil was willing to place the kindest construction on Sonya’s purpose in marrying Levalle. As she hadn’t the least desire to discuss tender emotions with the woman she got up and peered over the rail for the houseboy. She knew that Sonya was watching her movements and making comparisons with her own undeniable charms, but just then Madame Levalle meant very little to Phil.

“How long had you known Charles before you came here?” Sonya asked.

“I was living at Goanda. He came as a guest to the hospital there for three days.”

“That was all?”

Phil nodded. “He told me there was a job here, if I cared to take it.”

“He told you that?”

“Only in fun,” Phil retracted swiftly.

Sonya had risen and crossed to the wall. Her face was a tight sallow mask. “Why did you come here, Miss Crane?”

“You know why.”

“I know the excuse you fabricated in order to gain Charles’ sympathy and push in under the same roof with him. You are not rich. You would not work at the Institute without pay unless it suited some plan in your mind.”

Phil hated the woman’s nearness, her heavy perfume and the cruel dark eyes with tell-tale yellow in the whites.

“No, I’m not rich. I stayed so that Mrs. Kevin could take a holiday.”

The cool tones tinged with contempt were followed by an electric silence. Sonya’s nostrils had widened.

“It is best that we understand each other,” she said. “You will please be ready to go when Mrs. Kevin returns to her duties, in a fortnight.”

“Very well. Will you wait and have some tea?”

But Sonya was already descending from the balcony by the way she had come.

DURING the next week Charles was abnormally busy. Besides an unprecedented demand for serums from doctors and hospitals inland, the Institute dealt with a record number of patients. At any other time he would have welcomed the influx, for upon this year’s statistics depended his chances of Government assistance and throwing off the yoke of Sonya’s trusteeship.

Before Phil’s arrival he had handled Levalle’s widow warily and with restraint. True, he had kissed her, but when a woman of Sonya’s temperament and experience manoeuvred a man into a certain situation the only get-out was an embrace. Now he saw himself hurtling at speed towards a relationship more perilous than any he had hitherto shared with a woman, and unfortunately he was disliking her more at every moment.

On Monday morning Phil had come to his office and told him of Sonya’s visit, and he had inwardly seethed.

“You must take no notice,” he said. “I’m Principal of the Institute, not Sonya. When Mrs. Kevin returns we’ll fix you up with light work in the lab.” From beneath half-lowered lids he examined her. “How long is it—five months to go?”

“About that.” She hesitated, searching for words. “You’ve been so kind, Charles. I wouldn’t want to cause a bother for you. I have to go to England some time; it might as well be soon.”

He nodded gravely. “In a few weeks this climate will be no good to you. You’ll need cooler air and fresh food. Phil, you’ve got to tell me how I can get in touch with your husband.” She whitened, and leaning over the desk he went on rapidly: “You think that because I haven’t badgered you I’ve accepted your refusal to let him know how you’re placed. But I can’t accept it, Phil. It goes against a man’s nature to stand by and allow a woman to take such a major event in her life alone, and unhappy. He must have loved you or he wouldn’t have married you.”

“He married me because I needed my father’s legacy. Otherwise I’d have been penniless until I’m twenty-one.”

With sudden vehemence he said: “He loved you at the time I visited Goanda. Every pulse in your body assured you of it.”

“Please, Charles.” Her eyes had filmed and gone dark. Her voice shook. “I deceived myself. Please believe that and say no more about it.”

“But, my dear girl, how can I keep silent, knowing you still care for him? You realize that I could write to Dr. Grenfell and ask for details?”

“You won’t do that,” she said huskily. “If I thought you might I’d go away tomorrow.”

Charles felt helpless. He pushed to his feet, came round to where she sat and looked down at the crown of her head!

“Phil, have you considered it from his angle? As you reminded me before, I don’t know the man . . . but
you
do. Convince me that he’s a complete swine and I’ll never speak of him again.”

The face she raised was sharp with agony. “A man isn’t a swine because he can’t love a woman the way she wants him to. Apart from anything else, what he offered wasn’t enough. What would I gain by dragging him in at this stage? I’d still have to go alone to England, and the divorce would only be deferred. It’s common sense to avoid a double dose of punishment if you can.”

All that week and over the week-end the matter lay like a dormant spectre at the back of his mind. On Wednesday the Kevins were expected back, and that morning Mrs. Coombs tapped on Charles’ office door.

Her bright round cheeks were dimpled. “Can you spare me a minute, Dr. Metcalfe? It isn’t business.”

“Go ahead, Mrs. Coombs.”

“Well, Friday is Mrs. Kevin’s birthday.”

“Oh.” Charles anticipated what was coming. “You’d like to fix up the usual birthday dinner at the club?”

“Yes. What I’m not sure about is—do we invite Madame Levalle? She came to your party last year, but she hasn’t attended one of ours.”

Charles pondered. “Would you like me to sound her?”

“Will you?” she asked, delighted. “You see, with an equal number of men and women we could make a real highspot of it. The Kevins and the Coombs, Boyd and Phil Crane, Dick Merrow knows a girl who’ll come, and then there’s you and Madame Levalle. Five men and five women. We’d be the envy of Port Andrew!”

He smiled: “I’ll ring her at lunch-time.”

Mrs. Coombs withdrew and Charles was left with revived uncertainties. No danger of Sonya refusing to adorn Mrs. Kevin’s party, for she enjoyed queening it over the staff and playing hostess to his host. But would she stir up more unpleasantness? How he wished he could see some blue beyond the thunderheads.

When, over afternoon tea, Mrs. Coombs told her of the proposed party for Mrs. Kevin, Phil would have preferred to back out. Charles happened to catch her glance and inclined his head, so she accepted, thinking that the event would also serve as her own farewell.

The guests at the dinner party were eleven instead of the planned ten. It seemed that Sonya’s General had formed the habit of dining with her on Fridays, and rather than wound him by breaking the sequence, she had brought him along. Before the evening was through Phil had guessed that the woman was playing him off against Charles.

It was a well-managed party, but it went on too long. Tropical parties are like that, for there is nothing less inviting than a net-shrouded bed on a hot, sticky night. Most of the men had drunk freely and unwisely, and Mrs. Kevin and Dick Merrow’s girl-friend were almost paralysed. Only Charles, Sonya and Phil remained unwaveringly sober.

Sonya danced but once, with the General. For the rest she sat in a comer of the club salon, a jewelled box on her lap, from which now and then her tiny fingers extracted a rust-coloured leaf which she slipped between her lips and chewed. When she spoke her breath came in moist, sickly scented gusts. In her lovely features lurked sullen dissatisfaction, which Charles’ presence at her right hand did nothing to diminish.

At two o’clock he said, “Would you like me to take you home, Sonya?”

“I would, but not yet. The General is drunk; he, too, must be escorted to his house.”

“We might all have gone together. If you’re in no hurry I’ll take Phil and come back for you.”

“Miss Crane?” Sonya bent across him in order to view more closely Phil’s wan face with smudges under the eyes. “Miss Crane is the youngest here. She can leave with the others.”

Charles was standing. “Age has nothing to do with tiredness. Phil needs her bed.”

With displeasure, Sonya retorted: “It is ridiculous, the way you fuss over a child of nineteen. I am not blind, Charles. I saw you shield her from the draught at the door and pour away her second cocktail. If she is tired, let Boyd or Merrow take her. You are not a chauffeur.”

“Neither is fit to drive,” he answered abruptly. “Are you ready, Phil?”

As she got to her feet, Sonya did the same. The dark eyes, half-veiled, roamed with deliberation over the tawny head and slim shoulders.

“I’ll hang on,” Phil said hastily. “Please don’t trouble, Charles.”

“Get your coat,” was his reply. “I’ll meet you on the front terrace in five minutes.”

“Good night, Miss Crane,” drawled Sonya.

Phil murmured an answer and moved off.

“Was that necessary?” Charles said quietly. “Haven’t you any sympathy at all with your own sex, Sonya?”

“Sympathy?” She shrugged. “Why should that girl be given sympathy? If the heat upsets her, there are other places, less hot. The Institute is not a haven for love-lorn adolescents, Charles.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“She hopes you will keep her here because she is in love with you.”

“Listen, Sonya,” he said steadily, “Phil’s the victim of a disastrous love-affair. She’s going to England to get over it. By giving her work to do we’ve helped her, and I, personally, shall go on helping her till she sails.”

After a pause she said in a softer voice, “She has nothing to do with you and me, Charles?”

“Nothing at all.”

She smiled. “You forgive me for the little
crise de nerfs?
”

“Of course,” he assured her, a trifle wearily.

“I feared she might come between us. You will send her away soon?”

Phil’s unhappiness roused not the smallest compassion in Sonya; her self-absorption was complete.

She fingered his lapel and whispered: “Drive the girl to the Institute, but do not be long,
cheri
. You and I will see the General to his house, and after that we shall be alone for a precious hour before dawn. You wish that?”

Fortunately, he got away with a smile and a pat on her fingers. The music had ended and the dancers were dispersing. The throng, predominantly male, oozed on to the terrace, and Charles had to push his way to where Phil, like a forlorn bird, leaned against a pillar. Without speaking, he took a firm hold of her elbow and led her to the car. They were out on the coast road, speeding between tall trees on one side and scrub and sea on the other, before he looked in her direction.

“Warm enough?” he enquired. “Lucky that tomorrow’s Saturday. You have my permission to lie late.”

“Thank you.” She sounded cold and frightened.

For a wild half-minute he imagined himself taking her to England, seeing the business through, and eventually marrying her. If it were as simple as that!

He had an impulse to stop the car and draw her into his arms and tell her that he loved her and would never abandon her. It was that damned sentimentality of his, the insidious softness which had put him off becoming a general practitioner. Coming down from Sierra Leone he had forsworn sentimentality. Bugs were to be his future, and marriage, if it came, would be with a hard-headed nurse who could look after herself amid heat and disease. And here was Phil reopening all the old longings and turning them into regrets.

He angled into the Institute drive. “Did you bring the key to the balcony door?”

She took it from her bag. “I’d rather use that way.”

He braked. Suspecting her desire to go in alone, he said, “I’ll sit here till you’ve switched on. Good night, Phil.” She crossed the grass to the iron steps and mounted them. He saw her head as she stood at the glass door of her room, and then she disappeared into a black rectangle. A light blossomed, and she came back to pull curtains and close the screen.