dark hollows round his eyes, and
she could almost see how his teeth were clenched behind the firm lips.
She had taken him entirely by surprise in her outburst, and her news
concerning himself; and he discovered she had swept his secret from
him concerning his love for Meryl, almost before he knew what he was
speaking of.

"There might be something in what you say if Miss Pym cared for me in
return. That she does is the merest supposition."

"And how do you know that with such sureness?" she cried. "No, no,
Major Carew; in your heart you know otherwise. But you just let her go
away without a word, without a hope, and one or two of us know what
this hasty engagement means. Diana calls it martyrdom. She wrote me to
send Meryl an _in memoriam_ card instead of congratulations, for it
was more in accord with the occasion."

His face worked visibly, in spite of his stern suppression, but he
still stood rigid and upright, looking away from her--out over the far
shadowy veldt, seeing nothing.

In the pulsing silence that followed he beheld again that terrible
October scene, when his love lay dead upon the heather. Could he ask
any other woman to share that with him?... let the burden of such a
memory faintly touch her life?... He knew that at the inquest it had
been decided no one could possibly say who fired the shot. His uncle
and brother were both shooting at the time, in the same direction; but
though his friend Maitland had insisted upon a verdict of accidentally
shot by someone unknown, and Richard Carew had resolutely supported
him, in his own heart he had stood condemned. Yet if penance were
required, what had he not given?... Exile, loneliness, nonentity for
all the best years of his life; and her image, the beloved face of his
lost Joan, the only woman's presence in his life. And yet now, as he
stood gazing, gazing to the far blue hills, it seemed that her face
and Meryl's were strangely blended. From the very first their eyes
had been as the eyes of one woman, infinitely comprehending,
infinitely true. Was it possible that Ailsa's accusation was true? One
woman had been sacrificed more or less to his mad, insensate fury
against his brother. Was the other perhaps to be sacrificed to his
rigid, indomitable pride? One picture seemed to stamp itself upon his
brain with ever-increasing strength and clearness: the picture of
Meryl, leaning up against the window lintel that last evening at
Bulawayo, white as a frail, ex