emselves were not uninstructive. When tipsy, he
grew excited and harangued us, generally upon politics and religion, or
rather its reverse, for he was an advanced freethinker, although this
was a side to his character which, however intoxicated he might be, he
always managed to conceal from the Heer Marais. I may add that a certain
childish code of honour prevented us from betraying his views on this
and sundry other matters. When absolutely drunk, which, on an average,
was not more than once a month, he simply slept, and we did what we
pleased--a fact which our childish code of honour also prevented us from
betraying.

But, on the whole, we got on very well together, for, after the incident
of our first meeting, Monsieur Leblanc was always polite to me. Marie
he adored, as did every one about the place, from her father down to the
meanest slave. Need I add that I adored her more than all of them put
together, first with the love that some children have for each other,
and afterwards, as we became adult, with that wider love by which it
is at once transcended and made complete. Strange would it have been
if this were not so, seeing that we spent nearly half of every week
practically alone together, and that, from the first, Marie, whose
nature was as open as the clear noon, never concealed her affection for
me. True, it was a very discreet affection, almost sisterly, or even
motherly, in its outward and visible aspects, as though she could never
forget that extra half-inch of height or month or two of age.

Moreover, from a child she was a woman, as an Irishman might say, for
circumstances and character had shaped her thus. Not much more than a
year before we met, her mother, whose only child she was, and whom she
loved with all her strong and passionate heart, died after a lingering
illness, leaving her in charge of her father and his house. I think it
was this heavy bereavement in early youth which coloured her nature with
a grey tinge of sadness and made her seem so much older than her years.

So the time went on, I worshipping Marie in my secret thought, but
saying nothing about it, and Marie talking of and acting towards me as
though I were her dear younger brother. Nobody, not even her father
or mine, or Monsieur Leblanc, took the slightest notice of this
queer relationship, or seemed to dream that it might lead to ultimate
complications which, in fact, would have been very distasteful to them
all for reasons th