The tent had grown quite dark. Outside the camp noises were dying away. The sound of subdued voices reached him occasionally, and once or twice he heard Yoshio speak to some passer by.
Then, not far away, the mournful chant of a singer rose clearly out of the evening stillness, penetrating and yet curiously soft--a plaintive little desert air of haunting melancholy, vibrant with passion. It stopped abruptly as it had begun and Craven was glad when it ended. It chimed too intimately with his own sad thoughts and longings. He was relieved when Yoshio came presently to light the lamp and attend to his wants. The Jap chatted with unusual animation as he went about his duties and Craven let him talk uninterrupted. The functions of nurse and valet were quickly carried through and in a short time preparations for the night were finished and Yoshio, wrapped in a blanket, asleep at the foot of Craven's bed. He had scarcely closed his eyes since the day before the punitive force set out, but tonight, conscious that his vigilance might be relaxed, he slept heavily.
Craven himself could not sleep. He lay listening to his servant's even breathing, looking at the tiny flame of the little lamp, which was small enough not to add to the heat of the tent and too weak to illuminate it more than partially, thinking deeply. He strove to stem the current of his thoughts, to keep his mind a blank, or to concentrate on trivialities--he followed with exaggerated interest the swift erratic course of a bat that had flown in through the open door flap, counted the familiar objects around him showing dimly in the flickering light, counted innumerable sheep passing through the traditional gate, counted the seconds represented in the periodical silences that punctuated a cicada's monotonous shrilling. But always he found himself harking back to the problem of the future that he could not banish from his mind. His mental distress reacted on his body. He grew restless, but every movement was still attended by pain and he compelled himself to lie still, though his limbs twitched almost uncontrollably. He was infinitely weary of the forced posture that was not habitual with him, infinitely weary of himself.
The moon rose late, but when it came its clear white light filled the tent with a cold brilliance that killed the feeble efforts of the little lamp and intensified the shadows where its rays did not penetrate. Craven looked at the silvery beam streaming across the room, and quite suddenly he thought of the moonlight in Japan--the moonlight filtering through the tall dark fir trees in the garden of enchantment; he heard the night wind sighing softly round the tiny screen-built house; the air became heavy with the cloying smell of pines and languorous scented flowers, redolent with the well-remembered dreaded fragrance of the perfume she had used. Bathed in perspiration, shuddering with terrible prescience, he stared wild-eyed at the moonlit strip where a nebulous form was rising and gathering into definite shape. An icy chill ran through him. Suffocated with the rapid pounding of his heart, sick with horror at the impending vision he knew to be inevitable, he watched the shadowy figure slowly substantiate into the semblance of a living, breathing body. Not intangible as she had always appeared before, but material as she had been in life, she stood erect in the brilliant pathway of light, facing him.