Bellenger took the gift of the Brussels lace and put it sadly into the pocket of his coat.

‘Tomorrow,’ he said, ‘I go to Bristol, with my trapeze troupe. Then to London. I shall be away some time. But I shall hope. I shall continue to hope that when I return—’

‘Do not!’ burst out Clorinda. ‘I cannot be doing with it when men are foolish! And to hope that I will change my mind is just pure stupidity. You are a beautiful man, Monsieur Bellenger, but I cannot love you and that is that.’

Florian Bellenger then did a surprising thing. He opened his frock coat and ran a caressing hand down the slim silhouette of his body.

‘I am beautiful,’ he whispered. ‘Many women have told me. One lady from Switzerland committed suicide when she could no longer have me as her lover.’

At this, Clorinda Morrissey strode to the tea room door and opened it and a cold winter wind blew in and ruffled the curtains. She said nothing. She told herself that some of the vanities of men are simply not worth commenting on. She stood tall by the door and waited for Florian Bellenger to re-button his coat and walk out into the darkness.

‘… AND OF HIS KINGDOM THERE SHALL BE NO END.’

Only when he’d regained a little bodily strength and felt his head clear of the fever that had given him dreams of inescapable terror did Edmund Ross come to the realisation that all his collecting equipment was now missing. He counted himself lucky that he still had his wad of money, sewn into his hat brim, his hand-made boots, and one of his notebooks, but where was his compass? He’d searched every corner of the room he’d been given in Sir Ralph’s house, but did not find it. Gone, too, were his gun and the boxes housing the corked boards to which he’d pinned his insects. Also missing were his butterfly nets, his dissecting tools and his killing jars.

He asked Leon, ‘Do Malay people steal from white people?’

‘No, Sir, Mr Ross,’ said Leon, ‘other way around. You come. Take our gold. Sail away.’

‘Gold?’ said Edmund. ‘There is gold on Borneo?’

‘There was gold.’

‘And?’

‘I told you. Taken by white people. Nothing left.’

After this exchange, Edmund felt that to mention the things he’d lost would make him appear pathetic and puerile. He knew that he would have to reconstruct his boxes, made with such neurotic care in England, search the market stalls of Kuching for a compass and a gun. He would have to purchase jars and chloroform and fabricate new nets. All of this would take time, and from the way Leon looked at him – with unmistakable, long-lashed disdain – he at first began to wonder how far he could trespass on Sir Ralph Savage’s hospitality without upsetting the complicated laws of his household.

One early morning, Edmund was presented with a white robe, some raffia sandals and a pair of spectacles. He was led by Sir Ralph to a beautiful, secluded glade in the forest, shaded by palms, where two hammocks had been strung. From the nearby aviary came the cry of the cassowaries and from out in the forest the distant shout of the gibbon. The sky above the glade was the colour of opals, shading upwards to a more insistent blue.