, and put it under her feet.

"There is a draught from that broken window: shall I stuff something in
the pane?"

"No, we want air."

Gregory looked round, but nothing else suggesting itself, he sat down on
a box on the opposite side of the door. Lyndall sat before him, her chin
resting in her hand; her eyes, steel-grey by day, but black by night,
looked through the doorway into the next room. After a time he thought
she had entirely forgotten his proximity, and he dared to inspect the
little hands and neck as he never dared when he was in momentary dread
of the eyes being turned upon him.

She was dressed in black, which seemed to take her yet further from the
white-clad, gewgawed women about her; and the little hands were white,
and the diamond ring glittered. Where had she got that ring? He bent
forward a little and tried to decipher the letters, but the candle-light
was too faint. When he looked up her eyes were fixed on him. She was
looking at him--not, Gregory felt, as she had ever looked at him before;
not as though he were a stump or a stone that chance had thrown in her
way. Tonight, whether it were critically, or kindly, or unkindly, he
could not tell, but she looked at him, at the man, Gregory Rose, with
attention. A vague elation filled him. He clinched his fist tight
to think of some good idea he might express to her; but of all those
profound things he had pictured himself as saying to her, when he sat
alone in the daub-and-wattle house, not one came. He said, at last:

"These Boer dances are very low things;" and then, as soon as it had
gone from him, he thought it was not a clever remark, and wished it
back.

Before Lyndall replied Em looked in at the door.

"Oh, come," she said; "they are going to have the cushion-dance. I do
not want to kiss any of these fellows. Take me quickly."

She slipped her hand into Gregory's arm.

"It is so dusty, Em; do you care to dance any more?" he asked, without
rising.

"Oh, I do not mind the dust, and the dancing rests me."

But he did not move.

"I feel tired; I do not think I shall dance again," he said.

Em withdrew her hand, and a young farmer came to the door and bore her
off.

"I have often imagined," remarked Gregory--but Lyndall had risen.

"I am tired," she said. "I wonder where Waldo is; he must take me home.
These people will not leave off till morning, I suppose; it is three
already."

She made her way past the fiddlers, and a bench full