“There rose a wave of conversing voices, whispers, curses, a woman crying again, Rebecca crying, Can’t torture me like this, and then a man muttering and saying, Damnable, and someone laughing. What did you expect of me! asked a voice. But the surging, driving conversation broke with no further clarification and washed away from me, leaving me almost sick.

“I felt a hatred for the voice that had spoken, the voice which had asked, ‘What did you expect of me!’ and it seemed a logical hate.

“I stood up and took a deep breath. I was sick. The damned heat had made me sick. I was also getting bitten by mosquitoes, and that was making me feel sick as well.

“I’d been too softened by staying indoors on hot days like this.

“I waited until my head cleared, and then I went up the stairs and through the open doorway, the door itself having been pushed aside.

“ ‘Fearless squatters,’ I thought, and, as I noted that the door contained a big rectangle of leaded glass, glass that was clean, I was outraged. But I also had the strong sense that no one else was in this house.

“As for the room before me, it was perfectly circular and its unbroken surround of arched windows appeared to be bare of any covering at all. A stairway to the far left led to the floor above, and to the far right was a big heavily rusted iron fireplace, rectangular in shape with a rising chimney pipe and open folding iron doors. It was chock-full of half-burnt wood and ashes. The ashes were spilt out on the floor.

In the center of the room was the most surprising thing: a great marble desk upon an iron frame and a Roman-style chair of leather and gold. The style I mean here is what people today call a director’s chair. But it’s a style as old as Rome.

“Of course I went immediately to this configuration of marvelous furniture, and I discovered modern pens in a heavy gold cylinder, a nest of tall thick candles all melted together on a gold plate and a casual heap of paperback books.

“I fanned out the books and perused their covers. They ranged from what we so arrogantly call popular fiction to books on anthropology, sociology and modern philosophy. Camus, Sartre, de Sade, Kafka. There was a world atlas and a dictionary and several picture dictionaries for children, and also a pocket-size history of ancient Sumer.

“I checked the copyright dates in a few of these books. And I also glanced at the prices. This was all recent, though most were now swollen and soft from the humidity of the swamp.

“The wicks of the candles were black and the pool of wax that surrounded them on the gold plate argued that they had been burnt down quite a ways.