it reflected a square black head that was getting grizzled, and the
profile of a face that was haggard and worn.

The servant came with tea, and drew down the upper blinds, shutting out
that mocking shadow-play at which Saxham had been staring. As Lynette
busied herself with the shining silver and delicate Japanese porcelain,
there was a chance of studying, unobserved, the beloved book of her
face--a locked book to Saxham since that day in the Cemetery at
Gueldersdorp.

Ah, what a face it was! It fascinated and held him. Such long, thick,
shadowy eyelashes, sweeping the white cheeks! Such a low, wide, perfectly
modelled forehead above them, with fine arched eyebrows, much darker than
the richly rippling, parted hair that was coiled and twisted and roped
into a mass behind the small, delicate ears, as though its owner were
impatient of its luxuriance. Such a close-folded, mysterious mouth, with
deep-cut curves, hiding the pure white, rather overlapping teeth. An
irregular nose, rather square-ended, with eager nostrils; a rounded chin,
with a little cleft in it, went to the making of the face that Saxham and
many others thought so beautiful.

Only something was wanting to it. "Animation," the physiognomist would
have said. "Vitality, mobility." "Health," might have thought the ordinary
observer, mistaking the bluish shadows under the drooped eyelids and about
the mouth and nostrils for the usual signals of debility.

But Saxham, when he looked into the golden-hazel eyes, so often hidden by
the thick white eyelids, with their deep fringe of black-brown lashes,
said to himself with bitterness: "She is quite well. Nothing on earth is
wrong with her, except that she is not happy! I can give her everything
else on earth, it seems, but what she needs most of all!"

Let Joy, that radiant torch of the soul, illuminate those dim windows, let
Happiness sink like sweet rain into the dry heart, and the whole woman
would awaken into vivid glowing beauty, like the parched South African
veld after the spring rains. Red tulips would bloom between the boulders;
exquisite glowing pelargoniums and snow-white or pale-blue iris would
clothe the baked earth. The ice-plant would no longer be the only green
thing growing in the crannies of the rock. Delicate ferns and dew-gemmed
pitcher-plants would quiver there, and the spikes of the many-coloured
gladioli would thrust from the earth like spears; and the sweet-scented
clematis and the pass