the whip would
presently fall upon her shoulders, as he drove her out into the veld.
But his eyes drew hers to his own presently, and even while he spoke to
her now, the illusion of the sjambok remained, and she imagined his
voice to be intermingling with the dull thud of the whip on her
shoulders.

"I came to see one of my troop who was wounded at Wortmann's Drift," he
answered her.

"Old Gunter," she said mechanically.

"Old Gunter, if you like," he returned, surprised. "How did you know?"

"The world gossips still," she rejoined bitterly.

"Well, I came to see Gunter."

"On the grey mare," she said again like one in a dream.

"On the grey mare. I did not know that you were here, and--"

"If you had known I was here, you would not have come?" she asked with
a querulous ring to her voice.

"No, I should not have come if I had known, unless people in the camp
were aware that I knew. Then I should have felt it necessary to come."

"Why?" She knew; but she wanted him to say.

"That the army should not talk and wonder. If you were here, it is
obvious that I should visit you."

"The army might as well wonder first as last," she rejoined. "That must
come."

"I don't know anything that must come in this world," he replied. "We
don't control ourselves, and must lies in the inner Mystery where we
cannot enter. I had only to deal with the present. I could not come to
the General and go again, knowing that you were here, without seeing
you. We ought to do our work here without unnecessary cross-firing from
our friends. There's enough of that from our foes."

"What right had you to enter my room?" she rejoined stubbornly.

"I am not in your room. Something--call it anything you like--made us
meet on this neutral ground."

"You might have waited till morning," she replied perversely.

"In the morning I shall be far from here. Before daybreak I shall be
fighting. War waits for no one--not even for you," he added, with more
sarcasm than he intended.

Her feelings were becoming chaos again. He was going into battle.
Bygone memories wakened, and the first days of their lives together
came rushing upon her; but her old wild spirit was up in arms too
against the irony of his last words, "Not even for you." Added to this
was the rushing remembrance that South Africa had been the medium of
all her trouble. If Rudyard had not gone to South Africa, that one five
months a year and more ago, when she was left alone, res