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evenings spent on the broad shaded verandas of white plantation houses as hot days sank into dusk, of tumultuous Chinese city streets, and of Malays resting at nightfall beside the shallow stony pond before the mosque.
    Once again, as several times before, Veraguth visited his friend’s distant home in his imagination, quite unaware that his unspoken yearning responded to Burkhardt’s intentions. What bewitched him with images and roused his longing was not only the glitter of tropical seas and archipelagoes, or the color play of half-naked primitive peoples. More than that, it was the remoteness and quietness of a world where his sufferings and cares, his struggles and privations would pale, where his mind would cast off its hundred little burdens and a new atmosphere, pure and free from guilt and suffering, would envelop him.
    The afternoon passed, the shadows shifted. Pierre had run away long before, Burkhardt had gradually fallen silent and dozed off, but the painting was almost finished. The painter closed his tired eyes for a moment, let his hands fall, and with almost painful delight breathed in the deep sunny silence of the hour, his friend’s presence, his own appeased weariness after successful work, and the letdown of his overstrained nerves. Along with the frenzy of unstinting activity, he had long found his deepest, most comforting pleasure in these gentle moments of weary relaxation, comparable to the restful vegetative twilight states between sleep and waking.
    Rising quietly for fear of waking Burkhardt, he carried his canvas carefully to the studio. There he removed his linen painting jacket, washed his hands, and bathed his slightly strained eyes in cold water. A few minutes later he came out again, glanced for a moment inquiringly at his sleeping guest’s face, and then awakened him with the old familiar whistle which they had adopted twenty-five years before as their secret signal and sign of recognition.
    â€œIf you’ve had enough sleep, old man,” he said cheerily, “you might tell me a little more about India, I could only half listen while I was working. You were saying something about photographs; have you got them here, could we look at them?”
    â€œWe certainly could; come along.”
    For some days Burkhardt had been looking forward to this moment. It had long been his wish to lure Veraguth to East Asia and keep him there with him for a while. It seemed to him that this was the last chance, and he had prepared for it methodically. As the two men sat in Burkhardt’s room talking about India in the evening light, he produced more and more albums and packets of photographs from his trunk. The painter was overjoyed and surprised that there should be so many of them; Burkhardt kept very calm and seemed to attach no great importance to the photographs, but in secret he was eagerly awaiting a reaction.
    â€œWhat beautiful pictures!” Veraguth exclaimed in delight. “Did you take them all yourself?”
    â€œSome of them,” Burkhardt said tonelessly. “Some were taken by friends of mine out there. I just wanted to give you an idea of what the place looks like.”
    He said this as though in passing and with an air of indifference set the photographs down in piles. Veraguth was far from suspecting how painstakingly he had put this collection together. He had had first a young English photographer from Singapore, then a Japanese from Bangkok staying with him for weeks, and in the course of many expeditions from the sea to the depths of the jungle they had sought out and photographed everything that seemed in any way beautiful or worthy of interest; and then the pictures had been developed and printed with the utmost care. They were Burkhardt’s bait, and he looked on with intense excitement as his friend bit and sank his teeth into it. He showed him pictures of houses, streets, villages, and temples, of fantastic Batu caves near Kuala Lumpur,