for a few minutes about what you have been doing in Africa."

He obeyed her, and very soon she forgot the well dressed crowd of
men and women by whom they were surrounded, the light hum of gay
conversation, the band which was playing the fashionable air of the
moment. She saw instead the long line of men of many races, stripped to
the waist and toiling as though for their lives under a tropical sun,
she saw the great brown water-jars passed down the line, men fainting
beneath the burning sun and their places taken by others. She heard the
shrill whistle of alarm, the beaten drum; she saw the spade exchanged
for the rifle, and the long line of toilers disappear behind the natural
earthwork which their labours had created. She saw black forms rise
stealthily from the long, rank grass, a flight of quivering spears, the
horrid battle-cry of the natives rang in her ears. The whole drama of
the man's great past rose up before her eyes, made a living and real
thing by his simple but vigorous language. That he effaced himself
from it went for nothing; she saw him there perhaps more clearly than
anything else, the central and domineering figure, a man of brains and
nerve who, with his life in his hands, faced with equal immovability
a herculean task and the chances of death. Certain phrases in Fred's
letter had sunk deep into her mind, they were recalled very vividly by
the presence of the man himself, telling his own story. She sat in the
sunlight with the music in her ears, listening to his abrupt, vivid
speech, and a fear came to her which blanched her cheeks and caught at
her throat. The hand which held her dainty parasol of lace shook, and an
indescribable thrill ran through her veins. She could no more think
of this man as a clodhopper, a coarse upstart without manners or
imagination. In many ways he fell short of all the usual standards by
which the men of her class were judged, yet she suddenly realised that
he possessed a touch of that quality which lifted him at once far over
their heads, The man had genius. Without education or culture he had yet
achieved greatness. By his side the men who were passing about on the
lawn became suddenly puppets. Form and style, manners and easy speech
became suddenly stripped of their significance to her. The man at her
side had none of these things, yet he was of a greater world. She felt
her enmity towards him suddenly weakened. Only her pride now could
help her. She called upon it f