of
heaven; the pure air of the veld I love; white lilies growing on a
mountain top. Thank God you are all these things without any darkness
in you anywhere. It is the crown of a man's life to love a woman like
you."

"Let me go, Kerry," she said. "It is late. I must go."

He did not notice that her voice was broken with tears, for the wind
swept her words up to the trees and the boiling wrack of clouds beyond.
But he knew that it was time for her to go. That wild pool of love and
wind and stars was too sweet and dangerous a place for lovers to linger
in. He wrapped her cloak about her and sheltered her back to the door
from which she had emerged.

"Tomorrow morning . . . I shall be waiting for you in the lounge. We
will settle then how soon you will give yourself to me--it must be very
soon, darling. I am forty-four, and can't wait a moment."

The light from the door fell on his face and showed it gay as a boy's.
Her face was hidden, or he must have, recognized the misery stamped
upon it.

* * * * * *

In the morning light it seemed to her that the finger of snow on her
hair had broadened a little. It was five o'clock of an ice-green dawn,
with the mountain like an ashen wraith outside, and the wind still
raging. South-easters last for three days, Kenna had said, and she
shuddered to look at that unseen power whipping the leaves from the
trees, beating down the beauty of the garden, tearing the mists from
the mountain's side, only to pile them higher upon the summit. It took
courage to go out in that wind, but it took greater courage to stay and
meet Vereker Sarle. So she was dressed and hatted, with a small
suit-case in her hand, and starting on a journey to the Paarl. She did
not know what "the Paarl" was, nor where! Her first introduction to
that strange name was at midnight, when she found it on one of the
letters addressed to Diana. All the other letters were of no
consequence, but the Paarl letter seemed to solve for her the pressing
and immediate problem of how to escape from the terror of exposure by
Kenna before the loved eyes of Sarle. It was from the parson's
daughter, that eccentric painter who lived somewhere on the veld, and
whose home was to have been Diana's destination. "Clive Connal" she
signed herself, and said she hoped Diana would take the morning train,
as it was the coolest one to travel by, and arrive at the Paarl by
8.30, where a mule-cart