She heard Alban go into the bath-house and splash water over himself.
In a minute he came in.
He had changed into a shirt and shorts.
His fair hair was still wet.
'Tiffin ready?' he asked.
'Yes.'
He sat down at the piano and played the piece that he had played in the morning.
The silvery notes cascaded coolly down the sultry air.
You had an impression of a formal garden with great trees and elegant pieces of artificial water and of leisurely walks bordered with pseudo-classical statues.
Alban played with an exquisite delicacy.
Lunch was announced by the head boy.
He rose from the piano.
They walked into the dining-room hand in hand.
A punkah lazily fanned the air.
Anne gave the table a glance.
With its bright-coloured tablecloth and the amusing plates it looked very gay.
'Anything exciting at the office this morning?' she asked.
'No, nothing much.
A buffalo case.
Oh, and Prynne has sent along to ask me to go up to the estate.
Some coolies have been damaging the trees and he wants me to come along and look into it.'
Prynne was manager of the rubber estate up the river and now and then they spent a night with him.
Sometimes when he wanted a change he came down to dinner and slept at the DO's bungalow.
They both liked him.
He was a man of five-and-thirty, with a red face, with deep furrows in it, and very black hair.
He was quite uneducated, but cheerful and easy, and being the only Englishman within two days' journey they could not but be friendly with him.
He had been a little shy of them at first.
News spreads quickly in the East and long before they arrived in the district he heard that they were highbrows.
He did not know what he would make of them.
He probably did not know that he had charm, which makes up for many more commendable qualities, and Alban with his almost feminine sensibilities was peculiarly susceptible to this.
He found Alban much more human than he expected, and of course Anne was stunning.
Alban played ragtime for him, which he would not have done for the Governor, and played dominoes with him.
When Alban was making his first tour of the district with Anne, and suggested that they would like to spend a couple of nights on the estate, he had thought it as well to warn him that he lived with a native woman and had two children by her.
He would do his best to keep them out of Anne's sight, but he could not send them away, there was nowhere to send them.
Alban laughed.
'Anne isn't that sort of woman at all.
Don't dream of hiding them.
She loves children.'
Anne quickly made friends with the shy, pretty little native woman and soon was playing happily with the children.
She and the girl had long confidential chats.
The children took a fancy to her.
She brought them lovely toys from Port Wallace.
Prynne, comparing her smiling tolerance with the disapproving acidity of the other white women of the colony, described himself as knocked all of a heap.
He could not do enough to show his delight and gratitude.
'If all highbrows are like you,' he said, 'give me highbrows every time.'
He hated to think that in another year they would leave the district for good and the chances were that if the next DO was married, his wife would think it dreadful that, rather than live alone, he had a native woman to live with him and, what was more, was much attached to her.
But there had been a good deal of discontent on the estate of late.
The coolies were Chinese and infected with communist ideas. They were disorderly.
Alban had been obliged to sentence several of them for various crimes to terms of imprisonment.
Prynne tells me that as soon as their term is up he's going to send them all back to China and get Javanese instead,' said Alban.