beyond endurance. You will not
miss me, because for some time past you have been growing more and
more tired of me. So it is best for us to part: and you can now go
back to your Matabele wives, or bring them here if you prefer it; for
I shall never return to this life we have been leading. I warned you
that if you did not appreciate me, others did--and now I am leaving,
not only this country but this continent. I am going into the world
again, and now, you too, will be able to make a fresh start. We need
never meet again and in all probability we never shall. Farewell.

"Hermia."

Twice he read over this communication--slowly, carefully, as though
weighing every word. So she had gone, had deserted him. There was
truth in what she wrote. He had been growing tired of her--very: for he
had long since got to the bottom of the utter shallowness of mind which
underlay her winning and seductive exterior--winning and seductive, that
is, when laying herself out to attract admiration, a thing she had long
since ceased to do in his own case. The sting too, about his Matabele
wives, he never having possessed any, was a not very adroit insinuation
designed to place him in the wrong, and was all in keeping with a
certain latent vulgarity of mind which would every now and then assert
itself in her, with the result of setting his teeth on edge.

He smiled to himself, rather bitterly, rather grimly. He was sorry for
Spence. The boy was merely a fool, and little knew the burden he had
loaded up on his asinine and youthful shoulders, and, as for Hermia, his
smile became more saturnine still, as he pictured her roughing it in a
prospector's camp: for he looked upon her statement about leaving Africa
as mere mendacious bounce, and of course was unaware of any change for
the better in Spence's fortunes. For her he was not sorry, nor for
himself. As she had said, he would now be able to make a fresh start,
and this he fully intended to do. Yet, as he stood there, ill and tired
and shaken, looking around on his deserted home, it may be that some
tinge of abandonment and desolation crept over him. Hermia had chosen
her time well, at any rate, he thought, as he busied himself fomenting
and bandaging his throbbing and swollen ankle.

The sun had gone down, and the shades of evening seemed to set in with a
strange, unaccountable chill, as he limped about, looking after his
stock and other possessions. Decided