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and, leaping out into the sunlight, resume his aimless wanderings around the clearing.  As he skirted in his weary march the edge of the forest he glanced now and then into its dark shade, so enticing in its deceptive appearance of coolness, so repellent with its unrelieved gloom, where lay, entombed and rotting, countless generations of trees, and where their successors stood as if mourning, in dark green foliage, immense and helpless, awaiting their turn.  Only the parasites seemed to live there in a sinuous rush upwards into the air and sunshine, feeding on the dead and the dying alike, and crowning their victims with pink and blue flowers that gleamed amongst the boughs, incongruous and cruel, like a strident and mocking note in the solemn harmony of the doomed trees.
    A man could hide there, thought Dain, as he approached a place where the creepers had been torn and hacked into an archway that might have been the beginning of a path.  As he bent down to look through he heard angry grunting, and a sounder of wild pig crashed away in the undergrowth.  An acrid smell of damp earth and of decaying leaves took him by the throat, and he drew back with a scared face, as if he had been touched by the breath of Death itself.  The very air seemed dead in there — heavy and stagnating, poisoned with the corruption of countless ages.  He went on, staggering on his way, urged by the nervous restlessness that made him feel tired yet caused him to loathe the very idea of immobility and repose.  Was he a wild man to hide in the woods and perhaps be killed there — in the darkness — where there was no room to breathe?  He would wait for his enemies in the sunlight, where he could see the sky and feel the breeze.  He knew how a Malay chief should die.  The sombre and desperate fury, that peculiar inheritance of his race, took possession of him, and he glared savagely across the clearing towards the gap in the bushes by the riverside.  They would come from there.  In imagination he saw them now.  He saw the bearded faces and the white jackets of the officers, the light on the levelled barrels of the rifles.  What is the bravery of the greatest warrior before the firearms in the hand of a slave?  He would walk toward them with a smiling face, with his hands held out in a sign of submission till he was very near them.  He would speak friendly words — come nearer yet — yet nearer — so near that they could touch him with their hands and stretch them out to make him a captive.  That would be the time: with a shout and a leap he would be in the midst of them, kriss in hand, killing, killing, killing, and would die with the shouts of his enemies in his ears, their warm blood spurting before his eyes.
    Carried away by his excitement, he snatched the kriss hidden in his sarong, and, drawing a long breath, rushed forward, struck at the empty air, and fell on his face.  He lay as if stunned in the sudden reaction from his exaltation, thinking that, even if he died thus gloriously, it would have to be before he saw Nina.  Better so.  If he saw her again he felt that death would be too terrible.  With horror he, the descendant of Rajahs and of conquerors, had to face the doubt of his own bravery.  His desire of life tormented him in a paroxysm of agonising remorse.  He had not the courage to stir a limb.  He had lost faith in himself, and there was nothing else in him of what makes a man.  The suffering remained, for it is ordered that it should abide in the human body even to the last breath, and fear remained.  Dimly he could look into the depths of his passionate love, see its strength and its weakness, and felt afraid.
    The sun went down slowly.  The shadow of the western forest marched over the clearing, covered the man’s scorched shoulders with its cool mantle, and went on hurriedly to mingle with the shadows of other forests on the eastern side.  The sun lingered for a while amongst the light tracery of the higher branches, as if in friendly reluctance to abandon the body stretched in the green paddy-field.  Then Dain, revived by the cool of the evening breeze, sat up and stared round him.  As he did so the sun dipped sharply, as if ashamed of being detected in a sympathising attitude, and the clearing, which during the day was all light, became suddenly all darkness, where the fire gleamed like an eye.  Dain walked slowly towards the creek, and, divesting himself of his torn sarong, his only