e lintel, in the softened light, her outline and features
and deep, true eyes made too fair a picture for him to trust himself
to look upon.

"Perhaps you will be coming to Johannesburg presently?"

"I think not."

"Nor England?..." with a little wistful smile.

"Nor England."

"You speak almost as if you never expected to go there again?"

"I shall never go there again."

There was a pause; then she continued:

"Yet you are so absolutely an Englishman, and they say"--with another
little smile--"an Englishman always wants to go home to be buried."

"I am more a Rhodesian."

"And you feel like Cecil Rhodes?... We went out to the Matopos this
afternoon. It was a big thought, that of his, to be buried there. It
gives you people in the north something that we of the south have
not--your own special great man, lying in your midst. What a country
you will be some day! I envy you your share of the building."

"The south is a great country _now_. It is not a small thing to be
building there."

"Yes, but we have two races, and it spells division and weakens our
enthusiasm."

"Help to bridge over the gap. Help to make it spell union. That were a
work that any man might be proud to give his life to."

And at that slowly she became taut and rigid almost as he, with wide
eyes gazing into the night. He had struck a hidden chord; struck it
full and strong.

"Do you mean," she said a little breathlessly, "that though my
sympathies are so much with the north, my work, any usefulness I may
attain to, ought to be given to the south?... that ... that ...
perhaps it belongs to it?..."

He was silent a moment, weighing his words.

"I think," he said, "that you in the south are passing through a
critical stage, and there must be much need for strong women as well
as strong men. Dutch Predominance is the cry now, but the scales turn
easily, and it may be English Predominance to-morrow. No country can
make real headway, and consolidate its greatness, while there is this
changing and interchanging of power. There must be no predominance but
that of the country's good; and to that end Dutch and English _must_
be merged into South African. It is the duty of every true patriot to
look this way and that, and see how it can best be achieved; and to be
ready to sink all personal aims and triumphs for the furtherance of
the great end."

"Is it possible," she asked slowly, "when it seems one side only is
honest in its protestati