their veranda corner; the flower-boxes were empty now, and
Table Bay gleamed coldly back at him in the late afternoon sun of
midwinter. Then he turned around to face the girl, seated where her
golden hair seemed to him to catch and hold all the light centering
about the gay little tea-table.

"Don't," he said with some impatience. "Your arguments all echo my
own wish. I am pulled in two ways at once. At home, the mother is
growing restless. Since Vlaakfontein, she has lost her nerve, and
her heart is set on my meeting her in London in October."

Deliberately Ethel made a neat triangle out of three unused spoons.

"Well?" she said, without looking up.

"Piggie and I have had a smell of powder," he answered briefly. "We
want more."

"Well?" she said again.

"The question is, are we likely to get it."

"Not in England; not even in Cape Town," she answered, smiling at
the spoons before her.

"Then where?"

"Wherever the Boers are thickest."

"Yes; but, after all, you are talking platitudes, Miss Dent," he
said, with recurring impatience.

This time, she lifted her dark blue eyes to his face and allowed
them to rest there for a full minute.

"But you forbade me to argue," she said demurely.

He dropped down into a chair and faced her resolutely.

"Now look here, Miss Dent, I can't talk shop in tea-table English.
In fact, shop has no place at a tea-table, anyway. Still, you were
the one to start it. Let's have it out. I don't want to funk, at
this late day. If there is any fighting to be done, I want a hand in
it. I went into a game of a certain length; I hope I played up, and
stuck to the professional rules. That game is played out. I am not
Trooper Weldon of the Scottish Horse. I am plain Harvard Weldon
again and, to be quite frank, I don't like the change from khaki to
tweed. But about going in for another game: it all depends on what
the game will be. If it plays itself out, well and good; if it just
dribbles on and on, without accomplishing anything, even an end,
then I can see no use in going in for it. Fighting is one thing;
having a picnic all over the face of South Africa is quite another
matter. And, for the life of me, I can't see which is bound to
come."

There was a minor cadence to the final phrase. Then he fell silent,
and sat staring at the rug, while Ethel, leaning back in her chair,
studied him at her ease. All in all, she was pleased with the result
of her study. Always frank and likab