krantzes," Lyn was saying.
"That one over there, with the sun just lighting it up now, I know I
shall reproduce it either the colour of a brick wall or a dead smudge.
The shine is what I want to get."

"And you may get it, or you may not, probably the latter. There are two
things, at any rate, which nobody has ever yet succeeded in reproducing
with perfect accuracy, the colour of fire and golden hair--like yours.
Yes, it's a fact. They make it either straw colour or too red, but
always dead. There's no shine in it."

Lyn laughed, lightheartedly, unthinkingly.

"True, O King! But I expect you're talking heresy all the same. I
wonder what that boy is up to?" she broke off, looking around.

"Why, he's a mile or so away up the kloof by this time. Do you ever get
tired of this sort of life, Lyn?"

"Tired? No. Why should I? Whenever I go away anywhere, after the
first novelty has worn off, I always long to get back."

"And how long a time does it take to compass that aspiration?"

"About a week. At the end of three I am desperately homesick, and long
to get back here to old father, and throw away gloves and let my hands
burn."

Blachland looked at the hands in question--long-fingered, tapering, but
smooth and delicate and refined--brown indeed with exposure to the air,
but not in the least roughened. What an enigma she was, this girl. He
watched, her as she sat there, sweet and cool and graceful as she plied
her brushes, the wide brim of her straw hat turned up in front so as not
to impede her view. Every movement was a picture, he told himself--the
quick lifting of the eyelid as she looked at her subject, the delicate
supple turn of the wrist as she worked in her colouring. And the
surroundings set forth so perfectly the central figure--the varying
shades of the trees and their dusky undergrowth, the great krantz
opposite, fringed with trailers, bristling with spiky aloes lining up
along its ledges. Bright spreuws flashed and piped, darting forth from
its shining face; and other bird voices, the soft note of the hoepoe,
and the cooing of doves kept the warm golden air pleasant with harmony.

"What is your name the short for, Lyn?" he said, picking up one of her
drawing-books, whereon it was traced--in faded ink upon the faded cover.

She laughed. "It isn't a name at all really. It's only my initials. I
have three ugly Christian names represented under the letters L.Y.N.,
and it began with a joke