--that was what he had said. In spite of her
conduct that midnight, when he was on his way to Hetmeyer's Kopje, he
would have come again to her! How, indeed, he must have loved her; or
how magnanimous, how impossibly magnanimous, he was!

How thin and worn he was, and how large the eyes were in the face grown
hollow with suffering! There were liberal streaks of grey also at his
temples, and she noted there was one strand all white just in the
centre of his thick hair. A swift revulsion of feeling in her making
for peace was, however, sharply arrested by the look in his eyes. It
had all the sombreness of reproach--of immitigable reproach. Could she
face that look now and through the years to come? It were easier to
live alone to the end with her own remorse, drinking the cup that would
not empty, on and on, than to live with that look in his eyes.

She turned her head away from him. Her glance suddenly caught a sjambok
lying along two nails on the wall. His eyes followed hers, and in the
minds of both was the scene when Rudyard drove Krool into the street
under just such a whip of rhinoceros-hide.

Something of the old spirit worked in her in spite of all. Idiosyncrasy
may not be cauterized, temperament must assert itself, or the
personality dies. Was he to be her master--was that the end of it all?
She had placed herself so completely in his power by her wilful
waywardness and errors. Free from blame, she would have been ruler over
him; now she must be his slave!

"Why did you not use it on me?" she asked, in a voice almost like a
cry, though it had a ring of bitter irony. "Why don't you use it now?
Don't you want to?"

"You were always so small and beautiful," he answered, slowly. "A
twenty-stamp mill to crush a bee!"

Again resentment rose in her, despite the far-off sense of joy she had
in hearing him play with words. She could forgive almost anything for
that--and yet she was real and had not merely the dilettante soul. But
why should he talk as though she was a fly and he an eagle? Yet there
was admiration in his eyes and in his words. She was angry with
herself--and with him. She was in chaos again.

"You treat me like a child, you condescend--"

"Oh, for God's sake--for God's sake!" he interrupted, with a sudden
storm in his face; but suddenly, as though by a great mastery of the
will, he conquered himself, and his face cleared.

"You must sit down, Jasmine," he said, hurriedly. "You look tired. You
h