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That bristling up their spines was precisely the same sensation I had experienced when I first met Sir Alister Moeran. As I was slowly mounting the stairs on my way up to dress, I heard someone running up after me, and turned round to find Ethne beside me.
A chill, sinister feeling crept over me, but I kept my gaze fixed steadily in the same direction. The next minute the lights went up, and I found myself staring straight at Sir Alister Moeran. His arm was round Ethne's waist and she was smiling up into his face. Almost immediately they took up the dance again, and I and my partner followed suit. But all my gaiety had departed.
"Who was the girl?" I asked. Moeran slowly turned his lucent, amber eyes upon me as he answered. "She was a German, a sort of nursery governess at the English doctor's. He was naturally frightfully upset about it, and a regular panic sprang up in the neighbourhood.
"Because," I answered simply, "the feeling Sir Alister Moeran inspires in me is not jealousy, curiously enough. It's something else, something indefinable that comes over me now and again. Dogs don't like him, and that's always a bad sign, to my thinking." My uncle's bushy eyebrows went up slightly. "When did you make this discovery?" "This morning," I replied.
I actually had to whistle to them sharply several times before they came, and then it was in a slinking manner, taking good care to put Ethne and me between themselves and Moeran, and looking askance at him the whole while." "H'm!" murmured the General with puckered brows. "That was certainly odd, very odd!" "It was," I agreed, warming to the subject, "but there's odder still to come.
As a boy I used to spend the greater part of my holidays with him, and being childless himself, he regarded me more or less as a son. On February 16th Ethne, her mother, and Sir Alister Moeran arrived. I motored to the station to meet them. The evening was cold and raw and so dark that it was almost impossible to distinguish people on the badly lighted little platform.
Several times during dinner I glanced at Ethne, but it was easy to see that all her attention was taken up by her lover. Yet, oddly enough, I was not jealous in the ordinary way. I saw the folly of imagining that I could stand a chance against a man like Moeran, and, moreover, he interested me too deeply.
Then an unaccountable impulse made me say abruptly: "Moeran, how old are you?" His finely-marked eyebrows went up in surprise at the irrelevance of my question, but he smiled. "Funny you should ask! It so happens that it's my birthday to-morrow. I shall be thirty-five." "Thirty-five!" I repeated. Then with a shiver I rose from my seat. The room seemed to have turned suddenly cold.
"Then, since you did not know she was away, you, of course, have not heard the other news?" went on my aunt. "No," I answered in a wooden voice. "I've heard nothing." She beamed. "The dear child is engaged to a Sir Alister Moeran, whom she met in Luxor. Everyone is delighted, as it is a splendid match for her.
I remember once, years ago, coming upon a litter of lion cubs, in a cave, when I was out in Africa " "Yes! Yes!" I cried eagerly. "And that is what I smelt this morning. Those dogs smelt it, too. They felt that there was something alien, abnormal in their midst." "That something being Sir Alister Moeran?" I felt myself flush up under his gaze. I got up and walked about the room.
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