try her very severely.  Though the exercise that she compelled herself to take had restored to her the power to sleep, she always felt as weary when she arose as when she lay down.  The heat and the drought combined to wear her out.  Valiantly though she struggled to rally her flagging energies, the effort became increasingly difficult.  She lived in the depths of a great depression, against which, strive as she might, she ever strove in vain.  She was furious with herself for her failure, but it pursued her relentlessly.  She found the Kaffir servants more than usually idle and difficult to deal with, and this added yet further to the burden that weighed her down.

One day, returning from a ride to find Fair Rosamond swabbing the floor of the stoep with her bath-sponge, she lost her temper completely and wholly unexpectedly, and cut the girl across her naked shoulders with her riding-switch.  It was done in a moment—­a single, desperate moment of unbearable exasperation.  Rosamond screamed and fled, upsetting her pail inadvertently over her mistress’s feet as she went.  And Sylvia, with a burning sense of shame for her violence, retreated as precipitately to her own room.

She entered by the window, and, not even noticing that the door into the sitting-room stood ajar, flung herself down by the table in a convulsion of tears.  She hated herself for her action, she hated Rosamond for having been the cause of it.  She hated the blazing sky and the parched earth, the barren veldt, the imprisoning kopjes, the hopeless sense of oppression, of being always somehow in the wrong.  A wild longing to escape was upon her, to go anywhere—­anywhere, so long as she could get right away from that intolerable weight of misgiving, doubt, dissatisfaction, foreboding, that hung like a galling chain upon her.

She was getting like Mrs. Merston, she told herself passionately.  Already her youth had gone, and all that made life worth living was going with it.  She had made her desperate bid for happiness, and she had lost.  And Burke—­Burke was only watching for her hour of weakness to make himself even more completely her master than he was already.  Had he not only that morning—­only that morning—­gruffly ordered her back from a distant cattle-run that she had desired to inspect?  Was he not always asserting his authority in some fashion over her, crumbling away her resistance piece by piece till at last he could stride in all-conquering and take possession?  He was always so strong, so horribly strong, so sure of himself.  And though it had pleased him to be generous in his dealings with her, she had seen far less of that generosity since Guy’s recovery.  They were partners no longer, she told herself bitterly.  That farce was ended.  Perhaps it was her own fault.  Everything seemed to be her fault nowadays.  She had not played her cards well during Guy’s illness.  Somehow she had not felt a free agent.