ent on--

"I wonder what moved me to tell you so much about myself. It wasn't for
the mere love of talking."

"Of course not. I was so interested--_am_, I ought to have said."
Verna's eyes grew wonderfully soft as they met his. "It might, too,
have been a certain sympathy."

"That's it," he answered. "There was one thing I did not tell you,
though. I wonder if I ever shall."

"That rests with yourself," she answered. "But why should you?"

"Upon my soul I don't know."

They were looking straight at each other. The atmosphere seemed highly
charged. To Verna, in her then frame of mind, the enigmatical nature of
the remark opened all sorts of possibilities. She was strongly taunted
to reply, "Yes, tell me now, whatever it is." But she remembered their
short acquaintance, and the fact that this man was only a passing guest
to make whose stay a pleasant one was only a part of her duty. The
sympathetic vein cooled, then hardened.

Somehow her mood communicated itself to the other, perhaps another sign
of the unconscious bond of sympathy between them. What had he so nearly
done? he asked himself. Let out one of the most momentous secrets that
could lie on any man, and to an acquaintance of a few days. But somehow
the last expression rang hollow in his mind. Yet still, here was he, a
hard-headed, experienced man of the world. He must not allow himself to
be thrown off his balance under the influences of sunlight and air, and
the drawing sympathy of a very rare and alluring personality. So they
drifted off upon ordinary topics again, and at last Verna suggested it
was time to be going home.

"Well, you have brought me to a lovely spot, for a first ride," said
Denham, as they took their way down the hill. "If you go on as you have
begun I may be in danger of camping in these parts altogether. Hallo,"
he broke off. "It's as well we came down when we did. That fellow
might have gone off with our horses."

"He wouldn't have," answered Verna. "They are more like the old-time
Zulus up here, when you could leave everything about and not a thing
would disappear. Now, of course, civilisation has spoiled most of
them."

The man referred to, who had been squatting with his back towards them,
now rose. He was a tall Zulu, and ringed; and he carried a small shield
and a large assegai, the latter of which he had no business under the
laws of the ruling race to be carrying at all. And Denham could not
repr