down in the Convent bombproof, dreaming of him, weeping over his
last letter, or blushfully aware of his vicinity, panting at the bottom of
the ladder, listening for the beloved accents of the man who ... Hold
hard, though! she had never heard the voice of W. Keyse; or he hers for
that matter, but he would have recognised it among a thousand. He had told
her so, writing with ink pencil, of the kind that when sucked in moments
of forgetfulness tastes peculiarly horrible, and tinges the saliva with
violet, at spare moments in the trench. A phlegmatic Chinaman acted as
Love's postman, handing in the envelopes that were addressed to Mr. W.
Keyse, Esquer, in caligraphy that began in the top left-hand corner, and
trickled gradually down into the right-hand bottom one. Pumping the
Celestial was no use. John Tow sabee'd only that a fair foreign devil gave
the one missive, with a tikkie for delivery, and 'spose one time Tow makee
plenty good walkee back with anulla paper some pidgin bime-bye catchee
more tikkie. If walkee back no paper, too muchee John catchee hellee,
reaping only reproaches and no tikkie at all.

Judge how the heart of W. Keyse bumped against the concertina when the
slender vision in the holland skirt and white blouse and broad straw hat
appeared from underground. It was not she, though, Queen of heroic
thoughts, inspirer of deeds of daring yet to be done, who followed the
Mother-Superior.

It was the loveliest girl Beauvayse had ever seen, or ever would see. The
girl who had stood up in defence of three nuns against a threatening gang
of rowdy Transvaalers, one day in the Recreation Ground,--the girl who had
passed as the Staff dismounted at the Hospital gate on the day of
appropriation. The Mayor had had no chance of fulfilling his promise of an
introduction. The Mayor's wife, with her two children, was an inmate of
the Women's Laager. But at last the kind little genii that deal with
happenings and chances had brought Beauvayse and his divinity face to
face. Now she rose out of the Convent dug-out, in the waste that had been
the railway-official's front-garden, like a fair white Psyche-statue,
delivered in the course of some convulsion of Nature from the matrix of
the earth. And she was even more exquisite than his remembrance of her,
even more ...

Beauvayse descended abruptly from an empyrean flight of poetic imagery to
remember his torn and soiled silk polo-shirt with its rolled-up sleeves,
his earth-st