got a husband, you don't need anyone
else. They little know."

Sylvia's eyes went out across the _veldt_ to a faint, dim line of
blue beyond, and dwelt upon it wistfully. "Don't you think it
depends upon the husband?" she said.

CHAPTER VIII

OUT OF THE DEPTHS

That night the thunder rolled among the _kopjes_, and Sylvia lay in
her hut wide-awake and listening. The lightning glanced and
quivered about the distant hills and threw a weird and fitful
radiance about her bed, extinguishing the dim light thrown by her
night-lamp.

Bill Merston had brought her back a written message from her
husband, and she lay with it gripped in her hand. For that message
held a cry which had thrown her whole soul into tumult.

"I want you," he had written in a hand that might have been Guy's.
"I can't get on without you. I am coming to-morrow to fetch you
back--if you will come."

If she would come! In those last words she seemed to hear the
appeal of a man's agony. What had he been through before he had
brought himself to write those words? They hurt her unutterably,
piercing her to the soul, when she remembered her own half-hearted
offer to return. Yet she would have given all she had for a few
days' respite. The hot fierce longing that beat in those few words
frightened her by its intensity. It made her think of one of those
overwhelming _veldt_ fires, consuming everything in its path,
leaving behind it the blackness of desolation. Yes, he wanted her
now because she had been denied to him. The flame of his desire
had been fanned to a white heat. She seemed to feel it reaching
out to her, scorching her, even as she lay. And she shrank with a
desperate sense of impotence, feeling her fate to be sealed. For
she knew that she must go to him. She must pass through the
furnace anew. She must endure her fate. Afterwards--it might
be--when it had burnt itself out, some spark of the Divine would be
found kindled among the ashes to give her comfort.

And ever the thought of Guy waited at the back of her mind, Guy who
had failed her so hopelessly, so repeatedly. Was she going to fail
him now? Was she going to place herself so completely out of his
reach that even if he called to her for help she would be powerless
to stretch forth a hand to him? The thought tormented her. It was
the one thing that she felt she could not face, the one point upon
which she and Burke would be for ever at variance. Ah no!
What