out of Allah's
hands,--He lets you do it, of course, if you insist, for a wilful child
must be taught his lesson--without getting smashed up at a sharp corner
that you haven't learnt to turn. Ian, there's work for you to do. Even
Tynie thinks that he can do some work still. He sees he can, as he
never did before; and he talks of you as a man who can do anything if
you will. He says that if England wanted a strong man before the war
she will want a stronger man afterwards to pick up the pieces, and put
them all together again. He says that after we win, reconstruction in
South Africa will be a work as big as was ever given to a man, because,
if it should fail, 'down will go the whole Imperial show'--that's
Tynie's phrase. And he says, why shouldn't you do it here, or why
shouldn't you be the man who will guide it all in England? You found
the key to England's isolation, to her foreign problem,--I'm quoting
Tynie--which meant that the other nations keep hands off in this fight;
well, why shouldn't you find another key, that to the future of this
Empire? You got European peace for England, and now the problem is how
to make this Empire a real thing. Tynie says this, not me. His command
of English is better than mine, but neither of us would make a good
private secretary, if we had to write letters with words of over two
syllables. I've told you what Tynie says, but he doesn't know at all
what I know; he doesn't see the danger I see, doesn't realize the mad
thing in your brain, the sad thing weighing down your heart--and hers.

"Ian, I feel it on my own heart, and I want it lifted away. Your letter
has only one word in it really. That word is Finis. I say, it must not,
shall not, be Finis. Look at the escapes you have had in this war. Is
not that enough to prove that you have a long way to go yet, and that
you have to 'make good' the veld as you trek. To outspan now would be a
crime. It would spoil a great life, it would darken memory--even mine,
Ian. I must speak the truth. I want you, we all want you, to be the big
man you are at heart. Do not be a Lassalle. It is too small. If one
must be a slave, then let it be to something greater than one's self,
higher--toweringly unattainably higher. Believe me, neither the girl
you love nor any woman on earth is entitled to hold in slavery the
energies and the mind and hopes of a man who can do big things--or any
man at all.

"Ian, Tynie and I have our trials, but we are going to