d; leaves of books and
broken mouldering fragments of the familiar furniture lay about. Then
I remembered that there was a secret place hollowed in the floor and
concealed by a stone, where Stella used to hide her little treasures. I
went to the stone and dragged it up. There was something within wrapped
in rotting native cloth. I undid it. It was the dress my wife had been
married in. In the centre of the dress were the withered wreath and
flowers she had worn, and with them a little paper packet. I opened it;
it contained a lock of my own hair!

I remembered then that I had searched for this dress when I came away
and could not find it, for I had forgotten the secret recess in the
floor.

Taking the dress with me, I left the hut for the last time. Leaving
my horse tied to a tree, I walked to the graveyard, through the ruined
garden. There it was a mass of weeds, but over my darling's grave grew a
self-sown orange bush, of which the scented petals fell in showers on to
the mound beneath. As I drew near, there was a crash and a rush. A great
baboon leapt from the centre of the graveyard and vanished into the
trees. I could almost believe that it was the wraith of Hendrika doomed
to keep an eternal watch over the bones of the woman her jealous rage
had done to death.

I tarried there a while, filled with such thoughts as may not be
written. Then, leaving my dead wife to her long sleep where the waters
fall in melancholy music beneath the shadow of the everlasting mountain,
I turned and sought that spot where first we had told our love. Now the
orange grove was nothing but a tangled thicket; many of the trees were
dead, choked with creepers, but some still flourished. There stood the
one beneath which we had lingered, there was the rock that had been our
seat, and there on the rock sat the wraith of _Stella_, the Stella whom
I had wed! Ay! there she sat, and on her upturned face was that same
spiritual look which I saw upon it in the hour when we first had kissed.
The moonlight shone in her dark eyes, the breeze wavered in her curling
hair, her breast rose and fell, a gentle smile played about her
parted lips. I stood transfixed with awe and joy, gazing on that lost
loveliness which once was mine. I could not speak, and she spoke no
word; she did not even seem to see me. Now her eyes fell. For a moment
they met mine, and their message entered into me.

Then she was gone. She was gone; nothing was left but the tremulou