"He heard her footsteps passing along the matted passage, and smiled to
himself. He thought the affair was going to be rather amusing. One
finds it difficult to pity him even now when one thinks of it.
"The smoking-room door opened and closed, and he still sat gazing
dreamily at the ash of his cigar, and smiling.
"One moment, perhaps two passed, but the time seemed much longer. The
man blew the gray cloud from before his eyes and waited. Then he heard
what he had been expecting to hear--a piercing shriek. Then another,
which, expecting to hear the clanging of the distant door and the
scurrying back of her footsteps along the passage, puzzled him, so that
the smile died away from his lips.
"Then another, and another, and another, shriek after shriek.
"The native servant, gliding noiselessly about the room, laid down the
thing that was in his hand and moved instinctively towards the door. The
man started up and held him back.
"'Keep where you are,' he said hoarsely. 'It is nothing. Your mistress
is frightened, that is all. She must learn to get over this folly.' Then
he listened again, and the shrieks ended with what sounded curiously like
a smothered laugh; and there came a sudden silence.
"And out of that bottomless silence, Fear for the first time in his life
came to the man, and he and the dusky servant looked at each other with
eyes in which there was a strange likeness; and by a common instinct
moved together towards the place where the silence came from.
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