he is somewhat
the bewildering, uncomfortable stranger to the new-comer."

She marvelled that he should say so much, but hid her pleasure lest
she should unwittingly change his mood.

"She has never seemed that to me. Something has attracted me from the
very first. I came, I saw, I loved."

"You must remember that you came under exceptional circumstances."

"And you?"

"I was among the early pioneers."

"How splendid! I wish I could say the same."

"It was extremely uncomfortable."

"But you didn't mind. I don't need to be told that. There was so much
to make up for it. How good it must be to be a man!"

"Yet the women are the true heroes out here."

"Why?"

"We get what we came for. Interest, excitement of a kind, freedom...."

"And the women?"

"There is not much for the women, but the plucky ones are often
heroines."

"Only no one tells them so?"

"No one tells them so; therein lies the heroism."

"I see. They put up a good fight, and no one says, 'Well done!' Isn't
it the same with the men?"

"The men get many compensations."

"Compensations that make it worth while?"

"Distinctly."

They rode on in silence, both looking ahead to the blue mountain that
guards the north of Zimbabwe. The peaceful loveliness soothed his
spirit because he loved it, but in her it awakened a vague, swift
ache. She felt somehow that he had a right to love the country,
because he had made it his and given it of his best; that, for all his
presumable poverty in many things, he was yet so rich in what he had
achieved, and in what he had won for himself of interest and
usefulness. While for her?... She was an alien, a mere tourist, a
looker-on; the daughter of a millionaire who came to Rhodesia for
wealth, and gave--how little in return!

He might look at the tender outline of the lovely mountain with the
glad, restful consciousness of work well done. She could only look at
it with that ache of divine discontent: unplumbed, wordless longing.
Even the heroism of the settler's wife was not for her. The women who
were plucky enough to put up that good fight, although no one ever
said "Well done!" Compared with them, in his eyes she was probably a
mere cumberer of the earth; an ornament, intended only to be admired
by the leisured classes. The young splendid country had no use for
her, no place for her. She was an alien, an interloper; child of a man
who came only for gain, and took his gain elsewhere, recognising no