_wondered_.... Densely, stubbornly patriotic to his own
people and his own tongue he might be, but he had travelled enough to
recognise certain traits in the English "old public-school boy" which
it was good for a country there should be in her young men, and which
were not noticeably present in his countrymen of the back veldt.

Then his eyes rested on Meryl, and all his pulses throbbed with her
nearness. He had known for many months now that he loved her, yet he
had never actually told his love. At first there had been a
disinclination to marry an Englishwoman because of the unbending,
resolute policy he had identified himself with in the Union
Parliament. No one spoke of anti-British and anti-Dutch nowadays. It
was impolitic. But whereas certain men genuinely tried to ease the
forced situation and meet with fairness and justice upon common
ground, others still kept the flag of discord in their hands, though
they hid it under the table, so to speak, and only produced it when,
as they chose to assert, some pet foible of their countrymen was
overruled or some indignity threatened.

And of this section in Parliament van Hert was the leader. If he then
married an Englishwoman, not even South African born, would he not be
held up to ridicule by his colleagues? And then he would see Meryl
again, and all his feelings would merge into one great longing for
her; not for her money--she had been right when she said such a charge
was unjust, indeed, he almost wished she had been poor--but her quiet
dignity and calm strength and the exquisite fairness that held all his
senses.

And as he stood beside her now he hated more and more, without knowing
why, that she should go to Rhodesia. Whatever he had said to the
contrary, he knew that there was a romance about that far land that
might fascinate her. He knew that up there there were some of the
cream of England's men. "The second son's country," he had heard it
called, and that meant very often the well-born, high-bred gentleman
who was not afraid to work, who had never been pampered, and was full
of the best sportsman's spirit. The man of all others to attract such
a woman as Meryl Pym. The mere thought of it seemed to fill him with a
growing alarm, and presently, almost before he knew it, he found
himself pouring into her ears the story of his love.

Meryl was startled and taken aback. She had known perhaps that he had
a special liking for her; seen it often in his eyes when