doors until they
overflowed from the reception-rooms into the halls and staircases, and
even the verandahs--chrysanthemums and roses in riotous profusion,
nestling violets, rarest orchids, bright carnations, heavy with the
richest perfume.

Each flower had a separate message for the bride. They understood, and
they enveloped her with their unspoken sympathy.

Some there were adorned with her beloved, her most tragic "Vierkleur,"
and over them she lingered long, breathing a prayer to merciful Heaven
to still her beating heart for ever.

Not in the wild beauty of the Swiss scenery did she find rest, not by
the calm lakes of sapphire blue in which she saw reflected the rugged
mountains, soul-satisfying in their majestic grandeur, not in the
soundless, the mysterious regions of the eternal snows--but in the
north of Holland, where she found herself when autumn fell, Hansie
slept.

Languid and more languid she became; drooping visibly, she sank into
oblivion in that northern village home, conscious only in her waking
hours of the cold, the driving sleet, the howling wind, the ceaseless
drip, drip of the swaying trees.

As the long winter months crept by, her sleep became more and more
profound, less haunted by the hideous nightmares of the past, and
though she at first rebelled, ashamed of her growing weakness, she was
soon forced to yield to the resistless demands of outraged nature.

In this she was supported by her husband, who, unknown to her, was
acting on the advice of the famous nerve-specialist who had watched
her unobserved.

"Let her sleep, if need be for a year, and in the end you will find
her normal and restored, of that I am convinced," he had said; and in
these words her husband found his greatest comfort, as he tucked his
little dormouse in and tip-toed from the darkened room.

Hansie lost count of time, but there were two days in the week of
which she was quite sure--the day on which the South African mail
reached her and the day on which it was dispatched. In between she
slept, as we have seen, but when she woke she always knew that her
enfranchised spirit had been to her native land.

* * * * *

A full year had gone by, fifteen months, and when the first breath of
winter once more touched the land she gradually became aware of
voices calling to her, insistent, imperative voices from across the
seas.

"I must go," she said. "What am I doing here? South Africa i