ntimacy, innocent in itself, when two
people become absolutely necessary to each other's daily life. Indeed,
Jess had travelled a long way farther, but of this John was of course
ignorant. He was still at the former stage, and was not himself aware
how large a proportion of his daily thoughts were occupied by this
dark-eyed girl or how completely her personality overshadowed him. He
only knew that she had the knack of making him feel thoroughly happy
in her company. When he was talking to her, or even sitting silently by
her, he became aware of a sensation of restfulness and reliance that he
had never before experienced in the society of a woman. Of course to
a large extent this was the natural homage of the weaker nature to the
stronger, but it was also something more. It was a shadow of the utter
sympathy and complete accord that is the surest sign of the presence of
the highest forms of affection, which, when it accompanies the passion
of men and women, as it sometimes though rarely does, being more often
to be found in perfection in those relations from which the element of
sexuality is excluded, raises it almost above the level of the earth.
For the love where that sympathy exists, whether it is between mother
and son, husband and wife, or those who, whilst desiring it, have no
hope of that relationship, is an undying love, and will endure till the
night of Time has swallowed all things.

Meanwhile, as John reflected, the force to which he was attached was
moving into action, and soon he found it necessary to come down to the
unpleasantly practical details of Boer warfare. More particularly did
this come home to his mind when, shortly afterwards, the man next to him
was shot dead, and a little later he himself was slightly wounded by a
bullet which passed between the saddle and his thigh. Into the details
of the fight that ensued it is not necessary to enter here. They were,
if anything, more discreditable than most of the episodes of that
unhappy war in which the holding of Potchefstroom, Lydenburg,
Rustenburg, and Wakkerstroom are the only bright spots. Suffice it to
say that they ended in something very like an utter rout of the English
at the hands of a much inferior force, and that, a few hours after he
had started, the ambulance being left in the hands of the Boers, John
found himself on the return road to Pretoria, with a severely wounded
man behind his saddle, who, as they went painfully along, mingled curse