, "and come
back when you are all tired of it. I'll ask Sir Robert to let me have
the 'Skylark,' because his captain is so reliable. What do you say,
Meryl?... Shall you like that?..."

"I wish you could come," was her rather evasive answer, and she gazed
at the table decorations as if pondering something in her mind.

"Well, you can think it over," said the millionaire quietly, "and if
there is something you would like better tell me." He was peeling a
pear in a slow, methodical fashion, and his face quickly seemed to
assume the expression of one whose thoughts were already elsewhere;
but not before, with a quick, characteristic movement, he had glanced
keenly and surreptitiously into Meryl's face and read her indecision.
Something was on her mind. He knew it quite well; and his busy brain,
under its mask of complacent thoughtfulness, probed into the question.

Ever since the day of the King's funeral she had worn that thoughtful
air and baffled him a little with her wistful indecision. And though
he said nothing, he thought about it in his leisured moments; for
dearer than all his wealth and his power and his success was his only
child.

That night, trying still to probe the unrest in her heart, Meryl
stepped out on to their balcony and looked at the stars. Straight
before her, outlined in a misty moonlight that was almost overpowered
by the glare of the city's lights, were the tall towers of
Westminster. Down below the traffic passed ceaselessly to and fro.
From all sides came the mysterious hum of a great city's life. And as
she leaned listening, and gazing at the far-off stars that seemed such
mere pin-pricks above the glare, there came to her a thought of the
majestic stars that hung over Africa and the majesty of silence upon
the African veldt. And then gradually there stirred in her a warm
remembrance of Africa, and of how she had always loved it, and a
swift, unaccountable feeling of kinship with all the Britishers
scattered far and wide who called some colony "home."

True, she was English born and English educated; but so also was she
South African, for quite half her life had been passed in
Johannesburg, and it was there that her actual home existed. And so,
by slow imperceptible degrees, out of nowhere and without explanation,
crept into her mind the sudden realisation of Africa's claim upon her.
She remembered that it was there her father had amassed his wealth.
There had been won for her all the smo