ne; "I
would talk."

The chief's daughter made a barely perceptible sign, but her attendants
understood it, and remained where they stood.

"The success or failure of a hunt is a small thing. Such does not render
a man heavy of countenance," he went on, when they were beyond earshot.

"What does, then?" said the girl, raising her large eyes swiftly to his.

"Sorrow--parting. Such are the things which make life dark. I have
dwelt long among your people, and at the prospect of leaving them my
heart is sore."

As the last words left his lips, Laurence learned in just one brief
flash of a second exactly what he wanted to know. But the look of
startled pain in Lindela's face gave way to one of surprise.

"Of leaving them?" she echoed. "Has the Great Great One, then, ordered
you to begone, Nyonyoba?"

"Not yet. But it will be so. Listen! At the full of the second moon."

A cry escaped her. She understood. For a moment the self-control of her
savage ancestors entirely forsook her. She became the child of
nature--all human.

"It shall not be! It shall not be!"

The passion, the abandonment in the soft, liquid Zulu tone--in the large
eyes, transforming the whole attractive face--touched even
him--penetrated even the scaly armour which encased his hardened heart.
Considerations of expediency no longer reigned there alone as he stood
face to face with the chief's daughter. She was a magnificent specimen
of womanhood, he decided, gazing with unfeigned admiration upon her
splendid frame, upon the unconscious grace of her every movement.

"If I go, I return not ever," he went on, resolved to strike while the
iron was hot--to strike as hard as he knew how. "Yet how to remain--for
the brother of the king is so great a chief that he who would approach
him with _lobola_[3] would need to own half the wealth of the Ba-gcatya
people. Now I, who owned much wealth, am yet poor to-day, for the
Ba-gcatya have killed all my slaves, and the king has taken my ivory and
goods."

The girl's eyes sparkled. Perhaps she too had learned something she
wanted to know; indeed, it must have been so, for her whole face was lit
up with a gladsome light, a wonderfully attractive light.

"Perchance the king will return some of it," she said. "Yet you are a
white man, and strong, Nyonyoba--are all white men like you, I
wonder?--and can overcome all difficulties. Listen! You shall not leave
us at the full of the second moon. Now, farewell--and--fo