he corner by the railings of the church. He
walked quickly, very upright; there was something unseeing even about
that back view of him; or was it that he saw-another world? She had
never lost the mental habits of her orthodox girlhood, and in spite of
all impatience, recognised his sanctity. When he had disappeared she
went into her bedroom. What he had said, indeed, was no discovery. She
had known. Oh! She had known. 'Why didn't I accept Jimmy's offer?
Why didn't I marry him? Is it too late?' she thought. 'Could I? Would
he--even now?' But then she started away from her own thought. Marry
him! knowing his heart was with this girl?

She looked long at her face in the mirror, studying with a fearful
interest the little hard lines and markings there beneath their light
coating of powder. She examined the cunning touches of colouring matter
here and there in her front hair. Were they cunning enough? Did they
deceive? They seemed to her suddenly to stare out. She fingered and
smoothed the slight looseness and fulness of the skin below her chin.
She stretched herself, and passed her hands down over her whole form,
searching as it were for slackness, or thickness. And she had the bitter
thought: 'I'm all out. I'm doing all I can.' The lines of a little poem
Fort had showed her went thrumming through her head:

"Time, you old gipsy man
Will you not stay
Put up your caravan
Just for a day?"

What more could she do? He did not like to see her lips reddened. She
had marked his disapprovals, watched him wipe his mouth after a kiss,
when he thought she couldn't see him. 'I need'nt!' she thought. 'Noel's
lips are no redder, really. What has she better than I? Youth--dew on
the grass!' That didn't last long! But long enough to "do her in" as
her soldier-men would say. And, suddenly she revolted against herself,
against Fort, against this chilled and foggy country; felt a fierce
nostalgia for African sun, and the African flowers; the happy-go-lucky,
hand-to-mouth existence of those five years before the war began. High
Constantia at grape harvest! How many years ago--ten years, eleven
years! Ah! To have before her those ten years, with him! Ten years in
the sun! He would have loved her then, and gone on loving her! And she
would not have tired of him, as she had tired of those others. 'In half
an hour,' she thought, 'he'll be here, sit opposite me; I shall see him
struggling forcing hims