r you and no one else."

She gave him a curiously cutting glance, but spoke nothing. As the
sound of voices told of the approach of the other men, he walked to his
place without further remark, and had already taken his seat when Mrs.
van Cannan, followed by Saxby, entered. They were talking about
Saxby's wife, and Mrs. van Cannan looked infinitely distressed.

"I am so sorry. I will go and sit with her this afternoon and see if I
can cheer her up," she said.

"It will be very kind of you," said Saxby gratefully. "I have never
known her so low."

"It must be the weather. We are all feeling the heat terribly. If
only the rains would break."

"They are not far off," said Andrew McNeil cheerfully. "I prophesy
that tonight every kloof will be roaring full, and tomorrow will see
the river in flood."

"In that case, the mail had better go off this evening at six," said
Mrs. van Cannan. "It may be held up for days otherwise. I hope
everyone has their letters ready? Have you, Miss Chaine?"

"I have one or two still to write, but I can get through them quickly
this afternoon."

Christine avoided looking directly at her. She felt that the woman
must see the contempt in her eyes. It was hard to say which she
detested more of the two sitting there so serenely cheerful--the
faithless wife and mother, or the man who ate another man's salt and
betrayed him in his absence. It made her feel sick and soiled to be in
such company, to come into contact with such creeping, soft-footed,
whispering treachery. She ached to get away from it all and wipe the
whole episode from her mind. Yet how could she leave the children,
leave Roddy, desert the father's trust? She knew she could not. But
very urgently she wrote after lunch to Mr. van Cannan, begging him to
return to the farm as soon as his health permitted and release her from
her engagement. She expressed it as diplomatically as she was able,
making private affairs her reason for the change; but she could not and
would not conceal the fervency of her request.

There was a brooding silence in the room where she sat writing and
thinking. Roddy, for once, tired out from the night before, slept
under his mosquito-net, side by side with the little girls, and
Christine, looking at his beautiful, classical face and sensitive
mouth, wondered how she would ever be able to carry out her plan to
leave the farm. Who would understand him as she did, and protect him?
Even t