me,
and saw that our mercy was misplaced. Seeing my face change she ran
swiftly from me, and as she passed Indaba-zimbi, with a sudden movement
snatched her great knife from his hand. When she had gone about twenty
paces she halted, looked long and earnestly on Stella, gave one loud cry
of anguish, and fled. A few minutes later we saw her far away, bounding
up the face of an almost perpendicular cliff--a cliff that nobody except
herself and the baboons could possibly climb.

"Look," said Indaba-zimbi in my ear--"Look, Macumazahn, there goes the
Babyan-frau. But, Macumazahn, _she will come back again_. Ah, why
will you not listen to my words. Have they not always been true words,
Macumazahn?" and he shrugged his shoulders and turned away.

For a while I was much disturbed, but at any rate Hendrika was gone for
the present, and Stella, my dear and lovely wife, was there at my side,
and in her smiles I forgot my fears.

For the rest of that day, why should I write of it?--there are things
too happy and too sacred to be written of.

At last I had, if only for a little while, found that rest, that perfect
joy which we seek so continually and so rarely clasp.

CHAPTER XI

GONE!

I wonder if many married couples are quite as happy as we found
ourselves. Cynics, a growing class, declare that few illusions can
survive a honeymoon. Well, I do not know about it, for I only married
once, and can but speak from my limited experience. But certainly our
illusion, or rather the great truth of which it is the shadow, did
survive, as to this day it survives in my heart across all the years of
utter separation, and across the unanswering gulf of gloom.

But complete happiness is not allowed in this world even for an hour.
As our marriage day had been shadowed by the scene which has been
described, so our married life was shadowed by its own sorrow.

Three days after our wedding Mr. Carson had a stroke. It had been long
impending, now it fell. We came into the centre hut to dinner and found
him lying speechless on the couch. At first I thought that he was dying,
but this was not so. On the contrary, within four days he recovered his
speech and some power of movement. But he never recovered his memory,
though he still knew Stella, and sometimes myself. Curiously enough he
remembered little Tota best of all three, though occasionally he thought
that she was his own daughter in her childhood, and would ask her where
her mother