would be alone with him, and he meant that day to be one that he should
remember.

They started. At first the exhilarating spin along the smooth
fir-shaded road, together with the consciousness that the day was only
beginning, caused him partly to forget that most unwelcome recall. They
had arranged to use by-roads where the riding was good, and, taking the
train at Mowbray, proceed to Cape Town, and ride out thence as far
beyond Camp's Bay as they felt inclined. Now, as they spun along
through the sunlit air, between leafy gardens radiant with bright
flowers and the piping of gladsome birds, the noble mountain wall away
on the left towering majestic though not stern and forbidding, its
cliffs softened in the summer haze, its slopes silvered with the
beautiful wattle, and great seas of verdure--the bright green of oak
foliage throwing out in relief the darker pine and blue eucalyptus--
surging up against its mighty base, the very contrast afforded by this
glorious scene of well-nigh Paradisical beauty, and the mental vision of
a hot steamy wilderness, not unpicturesque, but depressing in the sense
of remote loneliness conveyed, was borne forcibly home to the mind of
one of them. It was a question of hours, and all would have fled. He
grew silent. Depression had reasserted itself.

Yet, was it merely a sense of the external contrast which was afflicting
him? He had traversed this very scene before, and not once or even
twice only. He had always admired it, but listlessly. But now? The
magic wand had been waved over the whole. But why transform the
ordinary and mundane into a paradise for one who was to be suffered but
one glimpse therein, and now was to be cast forth? A paradise--ah yes;
but a fool's paradise, he told himself bitterly.

"Well?"

He started. The query had come from Nidia, and was uttered artlessly,
innocently, but with a spice of mischief.

"Yes? I was wondering?" she went on.

"What were you wondering?"

"Oh, nothing! Only--er--as it is rather--er--slow for me, don't you
think so--supposing you give me an inkling of the problem that is
absorbing you so profoundly? You haven't said a word for at least ten
minutes. And I like talking."

"I am so sorry. Yes; I might have remembered that. How shall I earn
forgiveness?"

"By telling me exactly what you were thinking about, absolutely and
without reservations. On no other conditions, mind."

"Oh, only what a nuisance it is be