the ordinary standards of
criticism, he would fail to be ranked, in the jargon of her class, as a
gentleman. He represented something in flesh and blood which had never
seemed more than half real to her--power without education. She liked
to consider herself--being a writer with ambitions who took herself
seriously--a student of human nature. Here was a specimen worth
impaling, an original being, a creature of a new type such as never had
come within the region of her experience. It was worth while ignoring
small idiosyncrasies which might offend, in order to annex him. Besides,
from a journalistic point of view, the man was more than interesting--he
was a veritable treasure.

"You are going to talk to me about Africa, are you not?" she reminded
him. "Couldn't we sit in the shade somewhere. I got quite hot walking
from the station."

He led the way across the lawn, and they sat under a cedar-tree. He was
awkward and ill at ease, but she had tact enough for both.

"I can't understand," he began, "how people are interested in the stuff
which gets into papers nowadays. If you want horrors though, I can
supply you. For one man who succeeds over there, there are a dozen who
find it a short cut down into hell. I can tell you if you like of my
days of starvation."

"Go on!"

Like many men who talk but seldom, he had the gift when he chose
to speak of reproducing his experiences in vivid though unpolished
language. He told her of the days when he had worked on the banks of the
Congo with the coolies, a slave in everything but name, when the sun had
burned the brains of men to madness, and the palm wine had turned them
into howling devils. He told her of the natives of Bekwando, of the days
they had spent amongst them in that squalid hut when their fate hung in
the balance day by day, and every shout that went up from the warriors
gathered round the house of the King was a cry of death. He spoke of
their ultimate success, of the granting of the concession which had laid
the foundation of his fortunes, and then of that terrible journey back
through the bush, followed by the natives who had already repented of
their action, and who dogged their footsteps hour after hour, waiting
for them only to sleep or rest to seize upon them and haul them back to
Bekwando, prisoners for the sacrifice.

"It was only our revolvers which kept them away," he went on. "I shot
eight or nine of them at different times when they came too close,