Chapter TWO: Wild Honey--Part II (2)

It was not until late the next morning that her mind cleared enough to think. Then her first wonder was why she had not been called to rejoin the coach. After lying still a long time, she remembered the plan that she was to be left at this place, and made haste to dress to find out whether the coach had gone without her. Before her clothes were on, a knock came at the door, and she opened it a crack to the stupid, sad-looking woman of the night before. The following dialogue ensued:

"If you want korfie and grub I'll bring it to you. The big _baas_ said you was to have what you wanted."

"Have they gone?"

"Ya. The coach went at six. The big _baas_ said you was too sick to go and must rest in bed till he sends for you."

"Very well; bring me something to eat, please." She got back into bed, and little of her face was showing when the woman returned with food, set it down dully, and departed.

Time and space in which to think, lying there behind the bolted door, battered mud walls about her, bulging thatch overhead full of fat black spiders that sat immovable as Fate in their lairs. And her thoughts were of the long, long kind, though there was little of youth in them. She was so silent that the flies pretended to believe her dead and descended upon her in black battalions. The struggle to keep them off made the whole business just a little more sordid, and roused in her a kind of sullen fury against Africa and all that in it was.

"I must get out of it," she muttered to herself. "It is driving me mad. I must have been mad to let that man kiss me--a common oaf who talks Dutch in that horrible throaty way--a sort of Boer--how dared he!"

She tried to remember his face as it had revolted her the night before, suffused with blood and swollen, but she could only remember the keen, quiet eyes full of light and distance, and how they had darkened when he looked at her, and how they had measured up Roper, and how her heart had leaped in her breast at the sound of the first blow.

"I am mad," she reiterated wearily, and covered her eyes. "This miserable country has driven me mad!"

At sundown the next day, the woman brought a parcel and the news that a cart had come and would be ready to start again at dawn. The parcel contained a man's mackintosh, a dark blue coat and skirt of simple not to say skimpy design, a white blouse, and sailor hat. She shook out the Philistine garments carefully as if she thought a scorpion--or a note-- might be hidden among them. But no sign of either.

"_Tant mieux_!" she said at last, and discarded the rush hat and tattered shirt almost violently as if with them she hoped to throw off the last trace of her veld madness.

Wrapped in the mackintosh she slipped out to the waiting cart in the dimness of the dawn, and started on the last lap of the journey that was originally to have taken her ten days, but had already extended to six weeks! Only when the lights of Buluwayo gleamed before her at last could she really believe the end had come.

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Within a week, civilisation had its grip on her once more, and she was her cynical self with the nut of bitter dust back in her breast.

The opening up of the country had brought a fashionable English crowd to Buluwayo, among them many people that she knew and had special feuds with. One of the latter was Lady Angela Vinning, a woman with a good figure, beautiful, pleading green eyes, and thumbs down on every other woman except those who for the moment happened to fit into her schemes. She and Vivienne were staying at the same hotel, and exchanged polite greetings and glances of disdain every morning. Vivienne despised her for what she was: false, unscrupulous, and mean-souled. She detested Vivienne for being fifteen years younger than herself, and that is the most poignant of all the feminine hatreds.

Other grounds for general detestation by her own sex soon made patent to Vivienne were: (1) that Wolfe Montague, the richest man in South Africa, took no pains to hide the fact that his main business in Buluwayo was to be perpetually at her heels; (2) that having been romantically lost on the veld and found again no one quite knew how, she was the most-talked-of person in the country; and (3) that she had turned up looking perfectly radiant, and been seen of none until after regaining possession of her extremely _chic_ clothes. Tales with a tang to them were soon flying round Buluwayo. Vivienne assumed her mask and with a calm mien went about her business of "writing up" the country. But behind the mask and the mien she was raging. It was London and the torment of the last few years over again, only at closer quarters, for here she must share the same hotel with her enemies, run into them daily, and smile and exchange sweet words with them.

"If I could only wipe my boots on them all instead!" she thought savagely, and at such moments almost decided to marry Montague, whose flame grew more and more ardent with the days. But always a shadow slipped between her and her decision--a shadow with grey eyes! Where had those eyes disappeared to? She never saw them, and no one mentioned the name Kerry. The thing puzzled her, yet she was grimly glad. Of what use getting that strange torment of honey and perfume and wild places into her veins again, when she cared only for the call of civilisation, longed only for power and the weapons of wealth with which to smite these little-minded women who thought themselves so clever and fine? She would never be happy until she had power to make others suffer as she had been made to suffer. What had such an ambition to do with the honeyed madness she had known on the banks of the Lundi? Nothing.

One day, writing by the open window of her bedroom, she heard two men talking in the hotel verandah. One was a solicitor whom she had met, called Cornwall, and a remark of his riveted her attention.

"Brain and Hunt are after it. They'll give five hundred, but de Windt doesn't seem inclined to sell, though he needs money to get up North."

"I'll go a hundred better," said the other man firmly. "It's a good farm and I'd like it myself. Try him with that."

"Right. I'll try him."

Vivienne sat transfixed. The whole story rushed back to her mind and with it the remembrance of her plan to outdo the rogues by buying the farm herself. She had scorned the idea then, and despised herself for harbouring it, but in her present frame of mind it stood up salient and welcome as an old friend. Swiftly she found herself once more considering the question of where to raise the money.

She heard the other man bid Cornwall good-bye with a last injunction to see de Windt at once and make the offer, and a moment or two later she sauntered into the verandah and spoke to the solicitor.

"I heard that man's offer for de Windt's farm, and I want to tell you I'd like to buy it myself. I'll give 800 pounds."

Cornwall stared at her, smiling.

"You bitten with the land mania too, Miss Carlton?"

"Yes."

"There's plenty of it about," he remarked tentatively. "And de Windt's not particularly keen on selling."

"It must be _his_ farm or none," she said firmly. "I have a particular fancy for the place."

"Oh, well! I'll see what I can do for you. It's a good offer, more than the farm is worth, I think. De Windt's lying ill at present with a bad go of malaria. But I'll put the matter to him and let you know the result."

"Thank you."

She went inside again, and sat on her bed pretending to wonder where the money was to come from. In reality she knew perfectly well, and she didn't care. She was in the dirty business now, up to her eyebrows, for loss or gain. If she gained she would give back Montague his 800 pounds and a wave of the hand. If she lost she must marry him and forever hide the fact that he had been no more than a cat's-paw and a _pis aller_.

"He is too good for me anyway," she reflected. "Any man is too good for me. I've become a scoundrel and an adventuress. Three months of South Africa have done wonders for me! And I don't care--I don't care!"

She bathed her hot face but could not take the burn from it. It was still brightly flushed, making her look very young and lovely, when she stood before Montague and proffered her abrupt request.

"Will you lend me a thousand pounds for three months?"

Reflection had shown her that she might have to bid higher, or that even if she got it for 800 pounds she would need a margin sum with which to prosecute the search for gold. Further, if she could borrow the money for three months, she might be able to sell and refund to him.

"Of course," said Montague promptly, and could not keep elation out of his eyes. He looked like a large fair bull, was very red and very good-natured, but a hard man at a bargain.

"And will you do something for me?" he asked smiling.

"I cannot attach any conditions," she said quickly. "Mine is entirely a business proposition."

"And mine is, as far at least as I am concerned, pure pleasure. It is only to ask you to wear this little jewel for me." He held out a small morocco leather case, but she did not put out a hand to receive it. He sighed.

"Say then to wear it for three months. If when we clear up this terribly serious business proposition you wish to return it to me with the thousand, so be it. If you consent to keep it, I can only say--you will make me the happiest man in the world."

Mechanically her hand received the small case, and for a moment his hand closed on hers, and carried it to his lips. She grew a little pale.

"I cannot promise anything," she stammered, drawing her hand away.

"I do not ask you to... yet," was his answer, but the ring remained with her, and she knew it was part of the bargain. When she opened the case she was furious with herself, for it was a ring that could not escape note--a great single stone, amber coloured, set in a band of violet enamel.

They were all dining at Government House that night, and she wore it, striving to hide its brilliance amongst a number of other stones, but it glared out yellow and baleful as a tiger's eye. Lady Angela was the first to spot it.

"What a glorious stone! I do so love a yellow diamond. Is it out of the famous Montague mine, or a mere de Beer's? Journalism must pay, dear Viwie!"

She gave a little silvery laugh that rippled up Vivienne's spine like an asp, and left a poisoned wound.

Neither did a conversation carried on at her right in full hearing act as an antidote. A Judge of the High Court was telling his dinner neighbour what a charming fellow de Windt was, and how they would all miss him when he pulled out for the North.

"The country can't afford to lose men like that! But they are real lovers of the wild and won't stay when we begin to get too civilised."

"Yet de Windt himself is one of the most civilised fellows I've ever met," said the Administrator. "When all Colonials are like him, Africa will begin to move."

"A Colonial? _Pas possible_!" cried a woman.

"It is possible though. He was born out here and spite of Harrow and Oxford and a place at the Bar, Africa has him in her maw for good."

"The dear fellow would have been here to-night, if he had not been so ill," said the hostess. And the wretched Vivienne was thankful she had been spared that ordeal at least. But she held fast to her plan. What matter whether de Windt were a splendid fellow or not? Since he loved the wild, all the better for him--he wouldn't miss his gold mine! She felt herself growing harder and harder every moment.

"Millionaires must be made of tough stuff," she thought sardonically. "Fine fellows! I expect I shall begin to look like one soon. Eyes like flint with pouches under them, and a tiger trap for a mouth! _Zut, alors_!"

Thanks to Lady Angela the news was all over Buluwayo the next day that she was wearing Montague's ring. Even the fact that Cornwall came bearing propitious tidings did little to quench Vivienne's rage.

"It's all right," he said. "De Windt will take your offer. The other people are keen as mustard and want to go higher, but he says he wouldn't sell to them at any price."

"I want it fixed up at once," she said feverishly.

"As soon as you like. He asked me to hustle it along too, in case you changed your mind. The poor fellow has had a bad go of fever, but the news quite cheered him up, and he'll be about in a day or two. He seems greatly pleased at your wanting the place."

Vivienne was assailed by a choking sensation, and a bitter flavour came into her mouth, but she knew that as a prospective millionaire she must get accustomed to such discomforts. They were part of the training. As also was the skilful fencing she began to practise on the unsuspecting Montague. Certainly it was a case of Greek meeting Greek, but sometimes it seemed to her more like a duel between a sucking dove and a serpent. And she was not the dove. A London journalist had once said to her that he believed all women were natural-born crooks, and now she began to believe it.

"The black drop was in me all the time," she thought bitterly. "But it has taken Africa to bring it out!"

Although the negotiations for the sale went forward apace, they were not pushed on fast enough to please her, and she almost worried Cornwall out of his wits in her determination to have the thing signed and sealed before de Windt was well enough to get about. She did not yet feel quite hardened enough in the ways of millionaires to be able to face over a deed of sale the man whose gold she was stealing.

Another miserable part of the transaction was the receiving of Wolfe Montague's cheque. That was a bad moment. The paper burnt her hand like flame. But she examined it carefully, and pulled Montague up sharply when she found that it was drawn on a local Bank.

"That would never do," she said firmly. "I cannot have my affairs all over Buluwayo."

"I thought you wanted it for immediate use," he replied suavely, "and Banks don't talk."

"I wouldn't trust them," she averred; "I give my confidence to few." But she smiled her confidence in him at least with such lovely eyes that he went away with content in his heart to arrange the matter on such lines as only millionaires can command. Forty-eight hours later the money was to hand by cabled draft from London on the Standard Bank, Buluwayo.

The same morning Vivienne went for the first time to look at the farm. Montague's carriage was at her disposal as usual, and by the aid of a small local map she was able to direct the groom. They calculated that the distance there and back could be easily covered in a couple of hours, and that she could get back in plenty of time to prepare for a ball which the magistrate was giving that night in the Court House.

The farm lay out towards the Matopos, along a dusty, sun-baked road, but Vivienne, well shaded in the luxuriously cushioned body of the carriage noticed neither dust nor heat. The excitement of the gamble for money was in her veins, and she was telling herself how good a substitute it made for happiness. The flickering glance of envious hatred Lady Angela had shot at her from under a white umbrella on the sidewalk was part of the game that she was in now, up to her nostrils--the game which, though the weapons were sheathed in silk and the blows prepared behind honeyed smiles, was just the same old sweet game, governed by the same old sweet law, that was in the beginning and shall be in the end--the law of Club and Fang!

"What is the use of pretending I am too good for it, and was made for better things?" she meditated, and her smile took the little bitter twist that was now becoming habitual. With it still on her lips, she looked over the side of the carriage into a pair of grey eyes full of veld light and far places. A dog-cart containing two men had passed and gone, but not too soon for her to recognise Kerry and see an answering flash of recognition in his eyes.

Gone too her satisfaction, such as it was, in the gamble and the game. Fever died out of her veins and her heart lay cold as a stone. She looked not a girl, but a pale tired woman of thirty when she stepped out of the carriage and climbed over the little sloping kopjes that gave a view of the six thousand acres that would some day be a famous gold mine. Silent, lovely acres they were, full of colour and peace. Low-spreading trees standing alone, scattered purple rocks on which lay patches of rust red as blood, a carpet of wild grasses and little star-shaped veld flowers. Here and there great boulders were pitched together with enough earth to harbour a spiking tree and trailing creepers. Some lines of red gum had been planted and in their shadow stood a little thatched hut, before whose door, its slender branches tapping the thatch, grew a little tree of the laburnum class, laden with clustering golden bloom that gave a lovely scent.

A sudden poignant regret, stronger than herself, rushed through her, that the peace of these brooding acres of loneliness should be destroyed by what lay hidden under them. In imagination, she saw the dirt and debris of a new gold diggings, the purple rocks shattered by dynamite, trees and flowers torn out and lying dead, the little perky sand-blooms trodden down. All for gold to poison the hearts of men and buy the souls of women as hers had been poisoned, bought!

Was it too late now to repent, and instead of digging out the gold keep the land as it was, silent and peaceful? Go and live in that little thatched hut with the tree by the door? She dreamed with the thought a moment then turned bitterly away. The land was not even hers unless she could pay for it with the gold that came out of it! It was Montague's as _she_ was Montague's until she repaid the thousand pounds. She must go back to the scheme of avarice and duplicity she had entered into with eyes open and heart greedy for power and revenge. Her path was clear before her. It had nothing to do with peace and beauty and nothing in it that was noble, but it was her path. As she got back into the carriage and drove away, she knew that the memory of that place would haunt her all her days.

"Another restless ghost to walk the weary corridors of memory!" she said to herself.

Cornwall banished it for a while with the business of signing the transfer deed, but at the dance given by the magistrate that night it returned. A pair of eyes looking at her across space and gems and jewels, as once she had seen them stare across the veld, brought back the ghost and made it seem a very alive thing. She had never seen Kerry in the evening dress of convention before, and tried to feel astonished that he should resemble a distinguished man of the world rather than a sort of Boer. Inexplicably, as she stared, she forgot everything except to notice how worn and ill he looked. Over the shoulder of her partner, she met his clear gaze, and it became curiously and inextricably mixed in her memory with the lovely peace of the land she had visited that day. It was hot for dancing, and most people were beginning to meander out of doors and stay there.

"I want to introduce to you a great pal of mine--Kerry de Windt," said her partner, Marshall Brunton, who was also her host the magistrate. "May I?"

"Kerry de Windt?" she answered slowly.

"A splendid chap. He's here to-night, after a bad go of fever and pneumonia he got somehow on his way up-country."

"On his way up-country?" she repeated mechanically.

"It appears that he was coming up by coach but left it at Palapye to go off on a hunt for a little child that was lost from some waggons. Everyone had given up the search, but he found the child away in a wild krantz, starving, with an old mad Bechuana boy."

"Was it's mother alive?" Vivienne had a sickening vision of that poor mother sitting, hat in hand, outside her hut.

"He got back just in time to save her reason. Queer fellow! We'd never have known anything about it from _him_, of course. The story came up by wire from Palapye."

"Is that he talking to Lady Angela Vinning?"

"Yes. Shall we go over?"

"No. Take me out into the air please," she faltered. Her face was white as death. So _he_ it was whom she had robbed! Kerry de Windt! The man who had not only saved the child's life, but herself, from God knew what worse horrors than death!

It was out in one of the verandahs, dimly lit by Japanese lanterns, that he was brought and introduced to her.

"You two should find plenty to talk about, as you both know all about being lost on the veld," said the host gaily, and hurried away to other duties.

They stood looking at each other. She wanted to cry out something, but she did not know what it was. His face was very haggard with an irony she had never known about his mouth. In the end, all her stiff lips found to say was:

"I am glad you are better of your illness."

"Thank you. I have something on which to congratulate you also, it seems." The flavour of irony was on his tongue as well as on his lips.

"I did not know it was your land," she stammered, and he stared a moment.

"Oh, _that_," he said carelessly. "You're welcome. It's not the loss of that I mind."

There was a silence. They had sat down in a dim corner. At last her voice came faintly.

"What then have you lost?" She hid her hand on which shone the yellow diamond.

"Something I shall get along very well without in future, I dare say-- faith in women."

She couldn't bear the bitterness of his tone and words. They hurt more than if he had taken a knife to her. Yet a miserable pride and wrath made her pursue the subject to the last fence.

"You speak as though it is some fault other than your own?"

"_You_ know whose fault it is--whose hands have robbed me," he said fiercely; "whose lips have given to another what once they gave to me."

"Never, never!" The words broke involuntarily from her lips, though what it was she denied so furiously was not quite clear at first.

"You will not deny that for a few moments at least, I had a right to believe that you gave them to me? You kissed me back that morning."

She said no word at that, only put up her hand to her eyes for a moment as though to shut out something. The gesture brought into sight the yellow diamond, and with a finger he scornfully indicated it.

"Is not that a symbol of what I have lost--and another gained?"

Even as he spoke the large shadow bore down on them of Montague come to expostulate concerning a sit-out dance that was booked to him. Vivienne's voice, low, but very clear and cold, cut short his plainings.

"This ring is merely the symbol of a business arrangement between myself and Mr Montague. He very kindly lent me a sum of money with which to make a good speculation. I went to him in preference to applying to a money-lender, and in honour of my confidence in him he asked me to wear this charming stone. When I return the money in three months' time or less, I also return the ring. Is not that exactly how the matter stands, Mr Montague?"

"I believe it is," responded Montague with exceeding dryness, and looking anything but amiable. The unexpectedness of the attack took the wind out of his sails. He would have had more pleasure in bomb-shelling de Windt than making any statement of the kind.

"That is all then, thank you," said Vivienne calmly. "I shall have finished my talk with Mr de Windt in about five minutes' time."

Millionaires in South Africa are not accustomed to such treatment, and if Montague had been followed he might have been heard to mutter in his wrath that she could finish her conversation with de Windt in Hades if she liked. The principal fact, as far as Vivienne was concerned, was that he departed. De Windt too had risen, his haggard face grown very dark.

"Evidently there is nothing further for me to do but apologise, and get out. Your highly interesting conversation with Montague has made that clear, at least."

"Do you mean to be insolent?" she asked slowly.

"I hope not," he said with steady scorn; "only to reassure myself that your arrangements and speculations never have been and never can be any concern of mine."

"That is not quite correct. The speculation referred to had to do directly with you. The money I borrowed was to buy your farm."

"Indeed! Well, in that matter at least I have reason to congratulate you. It is going to turn out a good spec."

"Ah! and how is that?" she peered at him curiously.

"The land has a rich gold reef running through it. You will in all probability be able to re-sell for several hundred thousand pounds."

"And when did you know this wonderful thing?" she asked in a strange voice.

"After I'd sent word to you by Cornwall that I'd sell. Brain, the first bidder, came and confessed that he and his partner knew about the gold and had meant to `do' me. His idea, of course, was that I should pay him for the information by going shares and not letting you have the land."

Vivienne's heart stood very still.

"By the way, I was driving back from his place when I met you this morning. We'd been inspecting the specimens his partner had prospected. Cornwall has instructions to hand them over to you in the morning. They are unmistakable."

"And in spite of all this you still sold to me?"

"My bond was given," he said curtly.

She had risen too, and they were facing each other--about them all the chirping night things--peace everywhere except in their hearts. Music came faintly stealing from the dancing-room.

"So after all Africa has brought you luck," he said.

She trembled under the contempt his tone betrayed for that luck, but something in her that wished to live would not be daunted by his scorn. And that something spoke in spite of her, in a gentle, alluring voice.

"Do you think it is such great luck? Can you from your heart wish me no better?"

"The luck I would wish you entails advice you would never take."

"Try me," her voice was very low and sweet, with a broken note in it. "Try me--Kerry."

He looked at her sombrely. His face seemed to have grown more haggard. At last he said: "If you lived in the wilds awhile, under happier circumstances than those you have come through, the real woman in you might have a chance to live... you would come to realise how rotten they are, all these _lucky_ things you set such store by."

"Perhaps I know that"; the strong unfaltering force still had hold of her and used her voice. "Perhaps it is the wilds I am hungering for-- and the strange happiness of a morning on the banks of the Lundi--" Her voice was almost a whisper. He had to draw nearer to hear it, and stayed staring with a fierce moodiness into her eyes.

"Do you mean?--Vivienne?"

"I think you know what I mean." She lifted her lips to him, to take or leave, and knew that if he left them they would go lonely all life long, which was no more than she deserved who had played fast and loose with love. But he did not leave them. Once more she tasted the strange fragrant flavour of wild honey, and knew at last that this fantastic land of strange flowers and heavy scents, of silence and song, cruelty and beauty, was for her, as he was for her. Africa was wild honey. The love of Kerry de Windt was wild honey, and she could never content herself with any other. It was good to be safe in her own place against his heart. Good to have about her the arms that would never let her go back to a world which ate her heart and made her perform acts that besmirched her soul. But there was still that to tell which might loosen his arms and send them empty away. She held them tight, tight about her while she told him the ugly story.

For a moment there had sprung up in her an almost overwhelming temptation to hide the truth from him (he would never know unless she told him, how she had taken advantage of stolen information to plot against and rob him of his land and gold. No one even guessed the truth).

But the next moment she had torn out that temptation, and thrust it away, ashamed.

"How base I must be if even love cannot purify me!" she cried. "But it shall--it _has_. Listen Kerry."

In the end, he kissed the tears from her lips as once before he had kissed them. One more of the little crystal globes of illusion men have about the women they love went smash perhaps, but he hid the pieces from her bravely enough. Only, he held her a little closer, and there were no half measures about his conditions.

"You've got to give it all up and come with me--away up North--anywhere I go--and not care where you're going to--and never look back--nor care if you ever come back. Is that understood? We shall be poor--but by God! we'll get something out of life that those who live in towns and cities can't buy with all their gold."

"But your farm, Kerry?--the land that is rightly yours?"

"We couldn't touch it after all this buying and selling with borrowed money, Vivienne. Rightly or wrongly it is Montague's if he wants it-- and you bet he will want it--he must get it, together with the ring and that other two hundred pounds."

"I shall have robbed you then after all?" she said sadly.

"No, only paid for our happiness. Everything has to be paid for, dear. We are lucky if we can pay with anything so cheap as money! Do you care?"

"No, no, if you do not. I care for nothing except to be sure that I can repay you for all I--"

He kissed away the rest with kisses that were as fierce and tender and cruel as Africa herself. "Oh! yes, you can repay me, be very sure of that. But it must be now. _Now_! You must come with me this very night."

"To-night?" she faltered, trembling a little.

"Yes, to-night. I'm never going to let you go again. Brunton has the power to marry us, and I know he will do it after these people are all gone, if I put the case to him. My waggons are lying all ready a few miles from here. They've been ready for days, waiting for me to be well enough to start. Will you come?"

She thought for an instant of what the world would say, the big world across the sea, and this little portion of it in Buluwayo; the mocking smiles and innuendoes of the women, the men's amazement--but only for an instant, then found herself smiling; that side of life was finished with now, a higher, fuller life waiting for her.

"Yes, Kerry," she said simply, "I will follow you to the end of the world and the end of life."

De Windt was no man of half actions. Within half an hour, Brunton had been beguiled into consent and Mrs Brunton let into the secret. A long residence had bestowed upon the latter a taste for romance and a heart prepared for anything in the shape of adventure that came along. She threw herself rapturously into the preparations for an after-midnight marriage, and sent her own maid for enough things from Vivienne's hotel to make up a hasty travelling trousseau; the remaining luggage was to be sent for the next day. One or two very favoured guests being intimate friends of de Windt's were let into the secret and allowed to stay, the rest went home all unsuspecting and never knew the news until next morning.

The amazing thing was that Montague was one of those who stayed. Vivienne had accomplished a short interview with him, and returned him those things which were his with a brief _resume_ of the situation. To do him justice, he took it like a man, as well he might, when he was like to come out of the affair richer by several hundreds of thousands. For de Windt would accept no other solution of the money tangle than that Montague take possession of the farm and all its treasures. In return, he accepted the loan of Montague's carriage in which to carry Vivienne away to her new life.

In one of the small, sweet, exquisitely fresh hours before dawn they were set down and left alone on the wide and empty veld. The dusty road along which they had come was beautified by wraith-like rays from a passing moon. Purple rocks had put on a silvery sheen. The white radiant stars burned like jewels in the blue veil of heaven. Far hills and shadowy trees rose silent and salient against the sky. The spot where the waggons lay outspanned was close to de Windt's old farm, in the same area of brooding peace Vivienne had visited the day before--but with how different a mood! Then, Life had tasted bitterer between her lips than the aloes of Death. Now, her heart was clean of guile as a white rose, and she was a red and glowing rose whose fragrance intoxicated them both with the divine madness of love. Old Africa took them to her breast and they became part of her.