that unutterable ass, Quick, suddenly turned on the lights--I mean
struck the match which unfortunately he had with him."

Now I gave it up and faced the situation.

"Well, if you want the truth," I said, "not _very_ much myself, for
my sight isn't as good as it used to be. But the Sergeant, who has
extraordinarily sharp eyes, thought that he saw you kissing Maqueda,
a supposition that your relative attitudes seemed to confirm, which
explains, moreover, some of the curious sounds we heard before he lit
the torches. That's why he asked me to turn my back. But, of course, we
may have been mistaken. Do I understand you to say that the Sergeant was
mistaken?"

Oliver consigned the Sergeant's eyes to an ultimate fate worse than
that which befell those of Peeping Tom; then, in a burst of candour, for
subterfuge never was his forte, owned up:

"You made no mistake," he said, "we love each other, and it came out
suddenly in the dark. I suppose that the unusual surroundings acted on
our nerves."

"From a moral point of view I am glad that you love each other," I
remarked, "since embraces that are merely nervous cannot be commended.
But from every other, in our circumstances the resulting situation
strikes me as a little short of awful, although Quick, a most observant
man, warned me to expect it from the first."

"Curse Quick," said Oliver again, with the utmost energy. "I'll give him
a month's notice this very night."

"Don't," I said, "for then you'll oblige him to take service with
Barung, where he would be most dangerous. Look here, Orme, to drop
chaff, this is a pretty mess."

"Why? What's wrong about it, Doctor?" he asked indignantly. "Of course,
she's a Jew of some diluted sort or other, and I'm a Christian; but
those things adapt themselves. Of course, too, she's my superior, but
after all hers is a strictly local rank, and in Europe we should be
on much the same footing. As for her being an Eastern, what does that
matter? Surely it is not an objection which should have weight with
_you_. And for the rest, did you ever see her equal?"

"Never, never, _never_!" I answered with enthusiasm. "The young lady
to whom any gentleman has just engaged himself is always absolutely
unequalled, and, let me admit at once that this is perhaps the most
original and charming that I have ever met in all Central Africa. Only,
whatever may be the case with you, I don't know whether this fact will
console me and Quick when our th