tol bullet! There, all the
world's a stage, and fortunately most of us can act at a pinch.

Yes, we can act; we can paint the face and powder the hair, and summon
up the set smile and the regulation joke and make pretense that things
are as things were, when they are as different as the North Pole from
the Torrid Zone. But unfortunately, or fortunately--I do not know
which--we cannot bedeck our inner selves and make them mime as the
occasion pleases, and sing the old song when their lips are set to a
strange new chant. Of a surety there is within us a spark of the Eternal
Truth, for in our own hearts we cannot lie. And so it was with these
two. From that day forward they forgot that scene in the sitting-room of
"The Palatial," when Jess put out her strength and John bent and broke
before it like a reed before the wind. Surely it was a part of the
delirium! They forgot that now, alas! they loved each other with a love
which did but gather force from its despair. They talked of Bessie, and
of John's marriage, and discussed Jess's plans to go to Europe, just
as though these were not matters of spiritual life and death to each
of them. In short, however for one brief moment they might have gone
astray, now, to their honour be it said, they followed the path of duty
with unflinching feet, nor did they complain when the stones cut them.

But it was a living lie, and they knew it. For behind them stood the
irrevocable Past, who for good or evil had bound them together in his
unchanging bonds, and with cords that never can be broken.

CHAPTER XIX

HANS COETZEE COMES TO PRETORIA

Once he had turned the corner, John's recovery was rapid. Naturally of a
vigorous constitution, when the artery had reunited, he soon made up
for the great loss of blood which he had undergone, and in a little more
than a month from the date of his wound physically, was almost as good a
man as ever.

One morning--it was the 20th of March--Jess and he were sitting in "The
Palatial" garden. John was lying in a lone cane deck chair that Jess
had borrowed or stolen out of one of the deserted houses, and smoking
a pipe. By his side, in a hole in the flat arm of the chair, fashioned
originally to receive a soda-water tumbler, was a great bunch of purple
grapes which she had gathered for him; and on his knees lay a copy of
that journalistic curiosity, the "News of the Camp," which was chiefly
remarkable for its utter dearth of news. It was not easy t