"I killed her!" the dying woman faltered, "and I loved her. Yes, yes, I
know now. I became a brute again and dragged her to the brutes, and now
once more I am a woman, and she is dead, and I killed her--because I
loved her so. I killed her who saved me from the brutes. I am not dead
yet, Macumazahn. Take me and torture me to death, slowly, very slowly.
It was jealousy of you that drove me mad, and I have killed her, and now
she never can forgive me."

"Ask forgiveness from above," I said, for Hendrika had been a Christian,
and the torment of her remorse touched me.

"I ask no forgiveness," she said. "May God torture me for ever, because
I killed her; may I become a brute for ever till she comes to find me
and forgives me! I only want her forgiveness." And wailing in an anguish
of the heart so strong that her bodily suffering seemed to be forgotten,
Hendrika, the Baboon-woman, died.

I went back to the kraals, and, waking Indaba-zimbi, told him what had
happened, asking him to send some one to watch the body, as I proposed
to give it burial. But next morning it was gone, and I found that the
natives, hearing of the event, had taken the corpse and thrown it to the
vultures with every mark of hate. Such, then, was the end of Hendrika.

A week after Hendrika's death I left Babyan Kraals. The place was
hateful to me now; it was a haunted place. I sent for old Indaba-zimbi
and told him that I was going. He answered that it was well. "The place
has served your turn," he said; "here you have won that joy which it was
fated you should win, and have suffered those things that it was fated
you should suffer. Yes, and though you know it not now, the joy and the
suffering, like the sunshine and the storm, are the same thing, and will
rest at last in the same heaven, the heaven from which they came. Now
go, Macumazahn."

I asked him if he was coming with me.

"No," he answered, "our paths lie apart henceforth, Macumazahn. We met
together for certain ends. Those ends are fulfilled. Now each one goes
his own way. You have still many years before you, Macumazahn; my years
are few. When we shake hands here it will be for the last time. Perhaps
we may meet again, but it will not be in this world. Henceforth we have
each of us a friend the less."

"Heavy words," I said.

"True words," he answered.

Well, I have little heart to write the rest of it. I went, leaving
Indaba-zimbi in charge of the place, and making him a prese