TWO nights after de Cripsny had given the three Englishmen the information about vaudoux worship, Clensy, who had been haunting the vicinity of the presidential palace grounds, met Sestrina. She had managed to slip out of the palace unobserved. She was trembling in her delight.

“Away, Monsieur Royal, away from here, or we be seen!” she whispered as she gazed appealingly up into Clensy’s face.

“Where shall we go, Sestrina?” said the young Englishman, as he tenderly gripped the Haytian girl’s arm and stared about him.

“Away to the forest, the orange groves at H—; anywhere away from here!” said Sestrina, as she looked around with frightened eyes, waved her arms, and then pointed towards the big mahogany trees in the direction of Gonaives. The aftermath of the sunset had left a blue twilight in the skies, which were faintly dazzled with the gleams of a thousand stars. In a moment they had passed away into the shadows.

“Oh, glad am I to be away from the palace walls. You be killed, monsieur, if they see you there!” said Sestrina, as she fondly pressed Clensy’s arm over the thought that harm should come to him through her.

In less than half an hour Clensy and Sestrina sat in the seclusion of the mahogany trees. He felt happy. He had long since banished all ideas of the vaudoux from his head. If the remotest suspicion over the possibilities of Sestrina being interested in the fetish creeds remained in his head, one glance from her eyes dispelled it. He was in an emotional, poetic mood, and so he made passionate love to the girl beside him. Love is a contagious complaint when the first afflicted is handsome and tenderly persuasive. Could anyone have seen Sestrina and Clensy, as they sat on the dead palm stem that night, it would have been hard to tell which one was in the most advanced stage of the romantic malady. Sestrina’s eyes sparkled like diamonds, and Clensy’s surely rivalled those lovely gems of warm, living light, when he gazed into her face and sighed.

“Ah, you do not mean these nice things you say,” murmured Sestrina.

“’Tis true! I should never be happy again if we were parted,” replied the enraptured Clensy. And then he softly slipped one arm about her waist, and drew her face near to his own, and in the rapture of a strong man’s—But why pry into the secret, insane, but innocent actions of these lovers? No vulgar inquisitiveness stained the purity of their wonderful belief in each other.

“Ah, Sestrina, you are more beautiful than I dreamed, even when I first saw you,” he said in a reflective way, as he thought how the girl’s merry manner at the pianoforte had slightly led his thoughts astray. It was not boldness at all, it was only the boisterous innocence of the girl’s warm heart that made her respond so readily to his impassioned advances. As she sat there, under the mahogany tree, chatting about her pet parrots, the characters in her novels, and confiding little domestic matters to him, he discovered how really innocent and romantic her mind was.

“This beautiful creature a vaudoux worshipper! Oh, traitor to her memory! to have had such dreadful suspicions,” muttered his mental remorse. “You are the loveliest woman on earth!” he exclaimed.

Poor Clensy, there’s no doubt he was feeling badly in love to say such things. But he meant what he said, the same as thousands of men have meant the same strange things. The girl’s personality enchanted him, had appealed to the best that was in him, and so had made him a child again.

“Have you never seen nice girls, like me, Monsieur Royal?” murmured Sestrina, as she gazed in wonder on his face.

“No, I never have, never!” was Clensy’s emphatic reply, as he pressed his advantage. Sestrina had taken a flower from her hair and was fastening it on to the lapel of his coat, and, as she leaned forward, he kissed her brow and touched her shining tresses with his lips.

“But surely there are beautiful girls in Angleterre! I’ve read about them in books,” murmured the pretty Haytian maid as she looked up into Clensy’s face in a wistful way.

“Ah, Sestrina, but the authors of those books, which you say you have read, have never been to Hayti and sat beneath the starlit mahogany trees with you!”

Sestrina seemed to like that explanation immensely. Her eyes shone with delight, as the pale gleams from the rising moon dripped like silver through the overhanging boughs and tropical loveliness of the mahogany trees. It was easy enough to see that the girl was deeply in love with the young Englishman. She opened her eyes and stared like a pleased, wondering child, and then she did exactly that which Clensy asked her to do—lifted one pretty sandalled foot up so that he might kiss her ankle. It was a pretty ankle, no mistake about that. But, oh, propriety! Oh, self-respecting maidenhood, alas! where wert thou at that moment?

“It’s not wrong, Monsieur Royal, to do that, is it?” she whispered as she quickly dropped her foot and arranged the delicate fringe of her sarong. She looked Clensy straight in the eyes. He made no reply. The first rapture that followed his impulsive act and the sudden serious stare of Sestrina’s eyes as she asked that question, rendered him speechless. In a flash he had realised that his mind, compared with the girl’s beside him, was full of sin.

“I always go and confess everything to kind PÈre Chaco, the priest, so I must be careful, you know,” murmured Sestrina in a meditative way, as though addressing her own reflections.

“Do you really?” said Clensy, as he turned his eyes away and stared thoughtfully into the shadows of the forest. Then as he sighed and gazed at the girl again, she placed her finger to her lips and gave Clensy a coquettish glance.

“Why do you dream?” said Sestrina softly, as she noticed how quiet he had suddenly become.

“I cannot help dreaming while in your presence, Sestrina.”

“My father will be very angry if he discovers that I have been out so late,” said the girl.

“Is your father religious and good like you, Sestrina?” said Clensy swiftly, taking advantage of the opportunity to get Sestrina’s private opinion of her parent.

“Yes, he is very religious, but he does not go to kind PÈre Chaco as he once did,” replied the girl, as she swung her foot and sighed.

Clensy did not press his advantage. He saw by the girl’s manner that, whatever her father’s sins were, she was not a party to them. As they sat there conversing, Clensy tried to probe the Haytian girl’s mind. He asked her many questions, and found that she was a child so far as her knowledge of the world was concerned. Her manner and her girlish views charmed him. She had not gripped him by the arm and, in fierce accents, tense with emotion, started to declaim materialistic mad views on social questions. She did not jump to her feet and, with flashing eyes and chin thrust towards his face in magnificent female aggressiveness, reveal some bitterness which rankled in her irate soul over some peculiar notion that resembled a kink in the brain. She had simply let Clensy touch her brow with his lips, and had said, “I know so little about the world and these things which you ask me; all I really know is, that you have made me feel happy.” Then she had looked quietly into his face for a moment and added: “It’s so good of God to let me meet you like this, and I’m sure PÈre Chaco won’t mind.” And so the fragile girl had conquered. With the almighty power of her own innocence she had accomplished that which a thousand designing, worldly women could never have accomplished. She held Clensy’s life in the rapture of a merciless grip. The young Englishman was doomed! He at once robed the girl in all the religious glamour that his mind was capable of conjuring up. She sat there beneath the mahogany trees, clothed in those lovely symbols of wistful beauty that come to the minds of men who aspire to find the world’s best in woman; his mind exalted her from the ruck of mere woman into some goddess-creature, possessing attributes divine. Sestrina did not realise her great victory over Clensy.

“Wonderful! beautiful! clever too.” Though Royal Clensy had never heard Sestrina make one remark that could be construed as “clever” by a worldly or deadly sane man, she had set her magic seal on his soul. From that moment it was Sestrina’s advice and views that would impress him more than the advice of great philosophers. Had he been writing a book or building a new kind of house, he would have yearned to plan the book’s plot or build the house according to Sestrina’s views on the matter. Old men who took snuff and weighed their words well and wisely before they spoke, would tug their beards of wisdom—in vain! Clensy would have none of them! And, in the inscrutable wonder of simple things, it is quite possible that Sestrina’s advice would have been the wisest of all! And so, when Sestrina once more reminded Clensy of the swift flight of time, he at once realised that she was the wiser of the two. The next moment he was gallantly fastening the pin of the pretty ornament that kept the folds of her sarong in place. Then, without any undue argument, he obediently began to brush the green fern spores and leaves from her tresses.

“Ah, ’twould be most awful should they see me return home so late with moss in my hair and grass and leaves on my sarong,” murmured Sestrina.

“It would indeed,” said dull-witted Clensy, as he brushed the girl down, his hands gliding over her as though she were some misty wraith standing in the pale moonlight of the forest gloom. Then they hastened away under the tall trees, and stole down the orange groves by Selle gully. When they arrived near the palace, they stood under the palms and whispered insane farewells. Again Clensy bowed before the wisdom of Sestrina’s advice.

“Ah, monsieur, we may not stand here for ever saying good night.”

And so they parted. In a few moments Sestrina had slipped unobserved into the silent palace, and Royal Clensy walked away under the mahogany trees, and seemed to tread on air.

“Ah, Claircine, he is indeed beautiful, and there is no need for such alarm.”

So spake Sestrina, for when she had run along the corridor and entered her chamber, she found the old negress Claircine anxiously awaiting her. Sestrina, who had just told the negress that she had been in the palace grounds singing to herself and gazing at the moon, hung her head in shame.

“Alas, madamselle, here ams another—and yet another! ’Tis as plain as ze plainest ting can be!” said the shocked Claircine as she held another small fern leaf and bits of dead grass up to the light of the hanging oil-lamp and examined it critically with her large dark eyes. Oh, infatuated, dull-witted Clensy! careless betrayer of innocent woman, such was thy handiwork! And what did poor betrayed Sestrina do at this incriminating evidence of her guilt? She threw her arms about the negress and wailed:

“Sweet, dear Claircine, you will never, never tell on poor Sestrina?”

Claircine rolled her eyes for very joy, and then shook her head in a kind, chiding way. Though Claircine was an inveterate scandal-monger, she loved Sestrina and secretly yearned to hear that which she expected to hear at that moment. Claircine lifted her hands to the ceiling and looked terribly shocked when Sestrina had finished telling her the truth. Then Sestrina, finding that Claircine was sympathetic with her, went into ecstasies over Clensy’s perfections.

“But all ze maids do tink that each man who dey know, and who say nicer tings ’bout them, is de one best mans, and full of nobblyness,” reiterated Claircine as she rolled her eyes till the whites expressed her scepticism over the virtues of mankind.

“Ah, you will see him some day, and then you will surely believe me when you see for yourself,” said Sestrina, as she stood before her mirror and swerved slightly so as to convince herself that Clensy had really meant all he had said about her hair and her beauty. Sestrina was really modest, and, being really pretty, was dubious about her good looks.

“Ah, madamselle, you am bootiful’s enough,” said the negress, then she put her dark skinny hand against her chin in a meditative way, and said: “This young Englishmans may be one really nice mans; de good God must surely ’ave made one good white mans to walk ze earth,” said Claircine, then she solemnly added: “Yet it would be most strange if he should come here, to Hayti.”

The expression on the cynical old negress’s face was utterly lost on Sestrina, who, suddenly remembering, burst out: “Oh, how foolish of me to forget; why, Claircine, he has seen you and you have seen him!”

“And de debil wheres?” exclaimed Claircine.

“Why, it is Monsieur Clensy!”

“Ze gods in heaven! You do not mean the music-teacher?” gasped the astounded Claircine.

“Him and no other!” exclaimed Sestrina. Then the girl swiftly added, for she was anxious that Claircine should feel friendly towards Clensy, “Why, he said to me, only this night, ‘Ah, I remember her whom you call Claircine; she has kind, beautiful eyes and a face that tells me she might be a good friend to you and me.’”

Claircine, at hearing this, opened her mouth and revealed all her white teeth in one broad grin.

“P’r’aps he is one good mans. I somehow tink that he is good mans,” she said, and then she too turned and gazed into the mirror.

After that Sestrina and Claircine talked over the matter till far into the night. Then the negress kissed her mistress’s hand and, opening the small door that led from the chamber, crept into her own room to sleep.

Sestrina retired to bed, feeling very happy in the thought that Claircine had promised to be a friend to her and Clensy.

And Clensy? Immediately he arrived back in his lodgings after leaving Sestrina, he stole away into a vast, solitary dream-world of his own, a world whereon only one other than himself breathed—and that was Sestrina. And as he dreamed by the musical fountains, Sestrina came back to him in shadowy form. She tempted his soul with the magical fruit from the Tree of Knowledge—not the forbidden fruit, but the rosy, wine-scented apples that hung from the phantom branches of beauty and romance. Clensy seemed to come under some mystical spell as he dreamed on. He fancied he could hear and see Sestrina as she stole down some memory on sandalled feet, singing by a murmuring sea-shore, the light of the stars in her eyes, the rose of beauty on her lips. It was not so strange that he should have such wild fancies, for Clensy was a believer in the reincarnation theory and in anything that seemed more hopeful than the dubious possibility of the resurrection of dead bones. He had also come across a book in Acapulco which had greatly impressed him, since it told him that five hundred millions of mortals who dwelt in the wise East, believed in the reincarnation and transmigration of souls. Adams had wondered what on earth our hero was reading about when he had sat up all night dipping into the pages of magic that told the mysteries of old Japan and the ancient Eastern creeds. It was no trouble for Clensy to reverse the mythical significance of Greek sculptural art, such as the god Hypnus with his two children, sleep and death, holding inverted torches in their hands. Clensy felt assured that he had known the oblivion of Lethe’s dark stream, and yet could remember a life across the ages where he had eaten the golden apples of the Hesperides.

“It’s better to think the Fates have honoured me with the immortality of mortality, so that I can at least feel assured of the mortality that dreams immortality, far better than believing in the dubious things people seem to believe in,” he mused.

And as he sat there, indulging in strange metaphysics, hobnobbing with Semiramis and a few Assyrian kings and queens he had known somewhere away in the background of his creed, he dropped his pipe from his listless fingers—crash! on the floor, and the sound rumbled like an avalanche down the corridors of his dreaming mind. The visions vanished. Adams’s solitary eye loomed before him; back came the fetid smells and wretchedness of a present existence, making Clensy shiver as though with cold.

“God forbid that this is the great reality of life, and not the illusive dream!” he muttered, as he silently cursed the dab of that great sponge of reality which had swept across the mirror and had shown him such beautiful dreams.

It was only natural that Clensy’s metaphysical speculations should give him kaleidoscopic glimpses of physical beauty and not glimpses of visionary beauty, which men associate with the heavens. For to believe in the incarnation of the soul is to believe in the immortality of the flesh. Clensy realised this, and often tried to explore the depths of his own mind, but invariably returned to the upper regions with a sigh, convinced that he was his own heaven and hell. “It’s no good, I’m a sinner; the beauty of that which I can see and feel is greater than that which I must imagine.” So he mused in his foolishness, unable to read his own soul. But do not condemn Clensy. He was young; the fires of youth ran molten in his veins. The great alchemist, Sorrow, had not yet knocked at his door, bringing those phials and magic potions that transmute men and women into their older, other selves—sometimes changing them into Angels and sometimes Devils.