up friendships by post."

Then Ailsa herself joined them.

"Has Major Carew been with you into the temple, yet?" she asked Meryl.
"He is better than any guide-book for information."

Meryl coloured faintly, but looked a little amused. He had so
persistently withstood every friendly hint or invitation to accompany
them among the ruins.

"He has been very much occupied ever since we came," she said,
glancing towards him.

Carew looked quite unconcerned, and merely assented, which made Ailsa
rather want to shake him. "But it ought to be part of your business,"
she told him, "to interest visitors in our wonderful old ruin."

"I can hardly imagine anyone needing any incentive to that from me,"
he said.

Meryl glanced at him humorously. Some new phase she had detected in
him, since Diana persisted in what she called "baiting" him, made her
more ready to overlook his bearishness and less quick to feel
repulsed.

"Will you take me if I promise not to ask any silly questions?" she
asked, with a smile.

He looked up, and for a brief moment the past seemed to lie still as
one that is dead. His keen, direct eyes looked straight into hers, and
he said simply, "I should like to take you."

Meryl felt her cheeks glow a little with sudden, swift, indefinable
pleasure, and almost at the same moment Diana broke in upon them.

"Do you know, Major Carew, your singularly appropriate nickname has
been subjected to a little embroidery?... You are now called, after
the Coeur de Lion, 'The Bear with two faces.'" All in a moment he
stiffened and the shadow loomed; and while Meryl wondered Diana ran on
unheedingly, "If I say to you when we meet, 'Which face is it to-day?'
you will know that I mean, is it your day of lordly graciousness, or
is it the cast-iron, beware-of-the-bull frown day?"

"I think you are excessively rude, Diana," Meryl said, though she
smiled with the rest.

Carew smiled too, but he rose from his seat and moved away on some
small pretence.

And as he went, Meryl, watching with eyes that were daily gaining
clearer sight, saw that the shadow was as of some deep, unfathomable
pain.

She too got up and moved a little away from the rest, gazing with
grave, tender eyes across the kopjes, lying how bathed in a faint
ethereal flush of rose and gold.

"He had not always two faces," she said in her heart. "Something hurt
him badly once, and ever since he has taken refuge behind the iron
mask."

"Rhodesia," her