le way
overhead. It is an all around, north, south, east, and west, colouring
beyond all telling--something aloof, overpowering, incomprehensible,
with the remote majestic splendour of the Rockies, or the Sahara, or
the Victoria Falls.

Neither Carew nor Meryl spoke. They were of those who know that the
highest appreciation of all is in silence. But to herself Meryl
whispered:

"Lord, Thy glory fills the heavens."

At last he turned and glanced at the little book in her hand.

"You read Omar?"

"Yes. And you?"

"I like Adam Lindsay Gordon better. Omar is apt to undermine a strong
purpose. Gordon inspires one."

"Doesn't Omar help one to see things as they _are_, and dare to be
strong in spite of it, while Gordon avoids many essentials, and writes
chiefly of how we would have things be?"

"But surely the inspiration is the chief thing. The man who inspires
is better than the man who reveals, and in revealing unnerves." She
was silent, and he added, "I suppose it is the difference between the
aesthetic and the practical, and so they appeal to the aesthetic or the
practical side of man."

She wondered if it were possible such as he should have an aesthetic
side, and presently said:

"You are all practical, I should imagine."

He glanced at her half humorously. "I wonder why you say that?"

"I don't know, except that one does not usually associate aestheticism
and strength." Another man might have asked her if she was satisfied
he _was_ strong, but Carew only looked to the horizon. He was asking
it of himself instead.

And he asked it, because he was leaning there beside her, alone on the
kopje top. Suddenly yielding to an impulse he did not seek to analyse,
he said quietly, "I have never been a great reader of poetry, but long
ago I was engaged to be married, to some one who cared very much for
it. Omar was one of her favourites, and sixteen years ago he was very
little known compared with to-day."

Meryl felt the colour ebbing from her face, and averted her eyes.
Without any telling, she knew that this woman he had loved sixteen
years ago was the cause of that mysterious shadow on his life to-day.
When she felt she had complete control of her voice, she asked, "And
you were never able to be married?"

"She died." There was a pause, before he added, "You remind me of her
more than anyone I have ever known." And for both their sakes he
finished, "That is one reason why I have been glad to talk to y