my dream?"

"Don't be afraid," he answered cheerfully, "it is I--in the flesh."

She covered her face with her hand for a moment, then withdrew it, and
he noticed that her eyes had changed curiously in that moment. They were
still large and beautiful as they always were, but there was a change.
Just now they had seemed as though her soul were looking through them.
Doubtless it was because the pupils had been enlarged by sleep.

"Your dream! What dream?" he asked, laughing.

"Never mind," she answered in a quiet way that excited his curiosity
more than ever. "It was about this Kloof--and you--but 'dreams are
foolishness.'"

CHAPTER VI

THE STORM BREAKS

"Do you know, you are a very odd person, Miss Jess," John said
presently, with a little laugh. "I don't think you can have a happy
mind."

She looked up. "A happy mind?" she said. "Who _can_ have a happy mind?
Nobody who feels. Supposing," she went on after a pause--"supposing one
puts oneself and one's own little interests and joys and sorrows quite
away, how is it possible to be happy, when one feels the breath of human
misery beating on one's face, and sees the tide of sorrow and suffering
creeping up to one's feet? You may be on a rock yourself and out of the
path of it, till the spring floods or the hurricane wave come to sweep
you away, or you may be afloat upon it: whichever it is, it is quite
impossible, if you have any heart, to be indifferent."

"Then only the indifferent are happy?"

"Yes, the indifferent and the selfish; but, after all, it is the same
thing: indifference is the perfection of selfishness."

"I am afraid that there must be lots of selfishness in the world, for
certainly there is plenty of happiness, all evil things notwithstanding.
I should have said that happiness springs from goodness and a sound
digestion."

Jess shook her head as she answered, "I may be wrong, but I don't
see how anybody who feels can be quite happy in a world of sickness,
suffering, slaughter, and death. I saw a Kafir woman die yesterday, and
her children crying over her. She was a poor creature and had a rough
lot, but she loved her life, and her children loved her. Who can be
happy and thank God for His creation when he has just seen such a thing?
But there, Captain Niel, my ideas are very crude, and I dare say very
wrong, and everybody has thought them before: at any rate, I am not
going to inflict them on you. What is the use of it?" and she went
on