She felt she had forfeited the right to think of her own happiness till her negligence—­and the terrible consequences thereof—­had been remedied.  Perhaps it was in a measure self-blame that inspired her frantic prayer, the feeling that the responsibility was hers, and therefore that she was a sharer of the guilt.  That was another plea, less worthy perhaps; but one to which Guy could not refuse to listen.  It could not be his intention to wreck her happiness.  He could not know all that hung upon it.  Her happiness!  She shivered suddenly in the chill of the morning air.  Could it be that happiness—­the greatest of all—­had been actually within her grasp, and she had let it slip unheeded?  Sharply she turned her thoughts back.  No, she must not—­must not think of Burke just then.

The chance would come again.  The chance must come again.  But she must not suffer herself to contemplate it now.  She had forfeited the right.

Time passed.  She thought the train would never start.  The long waiting had become almost a nightmare.  She felt she would not be able to endure it much longer.  The night had seemed endless too, a perpetual dozing and waking that had seemed to multiply the hours.  Now and then she realized that she was very tired; but for the most part the fever of impatience that possessed her kept the consciousness of fatigue at bay.  If only she could keep moving she felt that she could face anything.

The day broke over the veldt and the scattered open town, with a burning splendour like the kindling of a great fire.  She watched the dawn-light spread till the northern hills shone with a celestial radiance.  She leaned from the train to watch it; and as she watched, the whole world turned golden.

Burke’s words flashed back upon her with a force irresistible.  “Let us go to the top of the world by ourselves!” Her eyes filled with sudden tears, and as she sank down again in her seat the train began to move.  It bore her relentlessly southwards, and the land of the early morning was left behind.

She reflected later that that journey must have been doomed to disaster from the very outset.  It was begun an hour late, and all things seemed to conspire to hinder them.  After many halts, the breaking of an engine-piston rendered them helpless, and the heat of the day found them in a desolate place among kopjes that seemed to crowd them in, cutting off every current of air, while the sun blazed mercilessly overhead and the sand-flies ceaselessly buzzed and tormented.  It was the longest day that Sylvia had ever known, and she thought that the smell of Kaffirs would haunt her all her life.  Of the few white men on the train she knew not one, and the desolation of despair entered into her.

By the afternoon, when she had hoped to be on her way back, tardy help arrived, and they crawled into Brennerstadt station, parched and dusty and half-starved, some three hours later.