g when
we escaped from Aunt Grizel," he said gaily. She looked at him
reflectively. "As I've just been telling Sarle, you learned the recipe
by heart, and swore that from henceforth you would use no other."

"Ah, yes," she drawled slowly. "But you take no account of time and my
'Winter-garment of Repentance.' I am a very different girl to the one
you knew two years ago."

"I realize that, of course." He grinned with delight at her point. It
seemed to him possible that the evening might be even more entertaining
than the afternoon.

"_This_ girl never drinks cocktails," she finished quaintly, and he
liked her more and more.

Many glances followed them as they passed down the long room, full of
rose-shaded candles and the heavy scent of flowers. Pretty women are
not scarce in Cape Town, especially at the season when all Johannesburg
crowds to the sea, but there was a haunting, almost tragic loveliness
about April that night that set her apart from the other women, and
drew every eye. Sarle felt his pulses thrill with the pride that stirs
every man when the seal of public admiration is set upon the woman he
loves. As he looked at her across the table he suddenly recalled some
little verses he had found scrawled in Kenna's writing on an old book
once when they were away together on the veld:

My love she is a lady fair,
A lady fair and fine;
She is to eat the rarest meat
And drink the reddest wine.

Her jewelled foot shall tread the ground
Like a feather on the air;
Oh! and brighter than the sunset
The frocks my love shall wear!

If she be loyal men shall know
What beauty gilds my pride;
If she be false the more glad I,
For the world is always wide.

Poor Kenna! She had been false: that was why he had sought the wide
world of the veld and renounced women. Sarle, certain of the innate
truth and loyalty of the girl opposite him as of her pearl-like outer
beauty, could pity his friend's fate from the bottom of his soul. But
being a man, he did not linger too long with pity; hope is always a
pleasanter companion, and hope was burning in him like a blue flame:
the hope that within an hour or two he would hold this radiant girl in
his arms and touch her lips. He thought of the garden outside, full of
shadows and scented starlight, and looking at the curve of her lips,
his eyes darkened, and strange bells rang in his ears. She had eluded
him for many nights, although