on that day at the very beginning of their
acquaintance when he had first brought her to Blue Hill Farm. She
felt herself to be even more of an alien in this land of cruel
desolation than when first she had set foot in it. It was like a
vast prison, she thought drearily, while the grim, unfriendly
_kopjes_ were the sentinels that guarded her, and the far blue
mountains were a granite wall that none might pass.

The sun was low in the sky when they reached the watercourse. It
was quite dry with white stones that looked like the skeletons of
the ages scattered along its bed.

"Shall we rest for a few minutes?" said Burke. But she shook her
head. "No--no! Not here. It is getting late."

So they crossed the _spruit_ and went on.

The sun went down in an opalescent glow of mauve and pink and pearl
that spread far over the _veldt_, and she felt that the beauty of
it was almost more than she could bear. It hid so much that was
terrible and cruel.

They came at length, when the light was nearly gone, to a branching
track that led to the Merstons' farm.

Burke broke his silence again. "I must go over and see Merston in
the morning."

She felt the warm colour flood her face. How much had the Merstons
heard? She murmured something in response, but she did not offer
to accompany him.

A deep orange moon came up over the eastern hills and lighted the
last few miles of their journey, casting a strange amber radiance
around them, flinging mysterious shadows about the _kopjes_,
shedding an unearthly splendour upon the endless _veldt_. It
spread like an illimitable ocean in soundless billows out of which
weird rocks stood up--a dream-world of fantastic possibilities, but
petrified into stillness by the spell of its solitudes--a world
that once surely had thrilled with magic and now was dead.

As they rode past the last _kopje_--her _kopje_ that she had never
yet climbed, they seemed to her to enter the innermost loneliness
of all, to reach the very heart of the desert.

They arrived at Blue Hill Farm, and the sound of their horses' feet
brought the Kaffirs buzzing from their huts, but the clatter that
they made did not penetrate that great and desolate silence. The
spell remained untouched.

Burke went with Joe to superintend the rubbing down and feeding of
their animals, and Sylvia entered the place alone. Though it was
exactly the same as when she had left it, she felt as if she were
entering a ruin.