is
safety? Ah! had she not? She could hardly disguise the truth from
herself. It was of no use to reason that being thrown together she must
perforce make the best of the companionship into which she was thrown.
She was face to face with the fact that John Ames was becoming very dear
to her indeed.

More and more did each enforced absence emphasise this consciousness.
It did not lessen her uneasiness; indeed, if any thing, very much the
reverse. But it changed the quality thereof. She thought less and less
of what a mishap involving him would entail upon her, more and more of
what it would mean on his account.

And yet this growing consciousness did not give rise to any alteration
in their daily relations. Nidia Commerell's character was stamped with
a very strong individuality. Prudery was utterly foreign to it, and she
could not for the life of her see any necessity for affecting a reserve
she did not feel, because she had for the first time in her life
discovered a man possessed of every quality to which she could look up--
merely because she and that man happened to be alone together in a
wilderness, in hiding for their lives. She smiled a little to herself
as she thought of her people in England, and what they would say if they
could see her now. Then she thought of their anxiety on hearing of the
outbreak in Rhodesia, but they would not have time to be anxious before
hearing of her safety. She wondered, too, whether Susie Bateman was
becoming alarmed about her, and from that she got to thinking, not for
the first time that afternoon, that John Ames was later than usual; and,
thus thinking, she rose to look forth.

The sun was dipping to the serrated sky-line, bathing the granite-piles
in a lurid flush. The light had gone off the wide hollow beneath,
leaving its broken-up stormy billows cold and grey, and the hush of
evening was in the air. Then a sound fell upon her ear, the sound as of
a stone dislodged by a light footfall. Her pulse beat quicker. It was
her companion returning at last.

But the glad smile, which she had prepared to welcome him faded from her
lips, and her face grew pale. Down yonder, on the fringe of the acacia
growth, a figure was standing; but it was not his.

Had the savage enemy found them out at last? Nidia's heart-strings
tightened and her blood froze. A further glance served to reassure her,
but only partially. The figure was not that of a native, of a savage.
But-