ke and the red flare were to die, it would be frightening in more
ways than one. But I see what you mean. There might be a sense of
peace, but the minds and bodies which had been vibrating with the stir
of power would feel that the soul had gone out of things, and they
would dwindle too."

"If Rhodes should fall, if the stamps on the Rand should cease--?"

He got to his feet. "Either is possible, maybe probable; and I don't
want to think of it. As you say, there'd be a ghastly sense of
emptiness and a deadly kind of peace." He smiled bitterly.

She rose now also, and fingering some flowers in a vase, arranging them
afresh, said: "Well, this Jameson Raid, if it is proved that Cecil
Rhodes is mixed up in it, will it injure you greatly--I mean your
practical interests?"

He stood musing for a moment. "It's difficult to say at this distance.
One must be on the spot to make a proper estimate. Anything may happen."

She was evidently anxious to ask him a question, but hesitated. At last
she ventured, and her breath came a little shorter as she spoke.

"I suppose you wish you were in South Africa now. You could do so much
to straighten things out, to prevent the worst. The papers say you have
a political mind--the statesman's intelligence, the Times said. That
letter you wrote, that speech you made at the Chamber of Commerce
dinner--"

She watched him, dreading what his answer might be. There was silence
for a moment, then he answered: "Fleming is going to South Africa, not
myself. I stay here to do Wallstein's work. I was going, but Wallstein
was taken ill suddenly. So I stay--I stay."

She sank down in her chair, going a little pale from excitement. The
whiteness of her skin gave a delicate beauty to the faint rose of her
cheeks--that rose-pink which never was to fade entirely from her face
while life was left to her.

"If it had been necessary, when would you have gone?" she asked.

"At once. Fleming goes to-morrow," he added.

She looked slowly up at him. "Wallstein is a new name for a special
Providence," she murmured, and the colour came back to her face. "We
need you here. We--"

Suddenly a thought flashed into his mind and suffused his face. He was
conscious of that perfume which clung to whatever she touched. It stole
to his senses and intoxicated them. He looked at her with enamoured
eyes. He had the heart of a boy, the impulsiveness of a nature which
had been unschooled in women's ways. Weaknesses in o