round each other like crazy, gleesome sprites.
Christine stood laughing at their fandangos and the antics of the
Kafirs engaged in herding them. A man standing near, pipe in mouth,
and hands in pockets, observing the same scene, was astonished that her
sad yet passionate face could so change under the spell of laughter.
He had wondered, when he first saw her, why a girl with such ardent
eyes should wear such weariness upon her lips and look so disdainfully
at life. Now he saw that it was a mask she wore and forgot when she
was alone, and he wondered still more what had brought such a girl to
be a governess on a Karoo farm.

But in a moment Christine's face changed, resuming, like a veil over
its youth and bloom, the look of world-weariness. She bowed slightly
to him, with a somewhat cool response to his pleasant morning greeting,
and made haste to resume her walk homeward.

She knew him to be Richard Saltire, the government forest and land
expert, who was engaged in certain experiments on the farm. He shared
a bungalow somewhere on the land with two young Hollanders who were
learning ostrich-farming, and came with them to lunch every day at the
house. Already, his bold, careless face, with its sunbitten beauty,
had separated itself in her memory from the faces of the other men, for
it was a face and personality that could not leave a woman undisturbed.
Incidentally, it had disturbed her in connection with an impression not
altogether agreeable.

One of the first hints Mrs. van Cannan had given the new governess was
that the master of Blue Aloes did not care for any kind of intimacy to
exist between the womenfolk of the farm and the men occupied about it.
Christine had been long enough in South Africa to recognize that this
was an odd departure from the general rule of friendliness and
equality; but a hint to the proud has the same efficacy as a word to
the wise. Besides, she had no longing for the society of men, but
rather a wish to forget that she had ever known any. Life had made a
hole in her heart which she meant to fill if she could, but only with
inanimate things and the love of children. So that Mr. van Cannan's
unsociable restriction, far from being irksome, suited her perfectly.

Mrs. van Cannan apparently did not apply to herself her husband's
injunction, for she was charming to everybody, and especially to Mr.
Saltire. It was impossible not to notice this, and also that the fact
was not lost upo