The sun was low in the sky when they reached the watercourse.  It was quite dry with white stones that looked like the skeletons of the ages scattered along its bed.

“Shall we rest for a few minutes?” said Burke.  But she shook her head.  “No—­no!  Not here.  It is getting late.”

So they crossed the spruit and went on.

The sun went down in an opalescent glow of mauve and pink and pearl that spread far over the veldt, and she felt that the beauty of it was almost more than she could bear.  It hid so much that was terrible and cruel.

They came at length, when the light was nearly gone, to a branching track that led to the Merstons’ farm.

Burke broke his silence again.  “I must go over and see Merston in the morning.”

She felt the warm colour flood her face.  How much had the Merstons heard?  She murmured something in response, but she did not offer to accompany him.

A deep orange moon came up over the eastern hills and lighted the last few miles of their journey, casting a strange amber radiance around them, flinging mysterious shadows about the kopjes, shedding an unearthly splendour upon the endless veldt.  It spread like an illimitable ocean in soundless billows out of which weird rocks stood up—­a dream-world of fantastic possibilities, but petrified into stillness by the spell of its solitudes—­a world that once surely had thrilled with magic and now was dead.

As they rode past the last kopje—­her kopje that she had never yet climbed, they seemed to her to enter the innermost loneliness of all, to reach the very heart of the desert.

They arrived at Blue Hill Farm, and the sound of their horses’ feet brought the Kaffirs buzzing from their huts, but the clatter that they made did not penetrate that great and desolate silence.  The spell remained untouched.

Burke went with Joe to superintend the rubbing down and feeding of their animals, and Sylvia entered the place alone.  Though it was exactly the same as when she had left it, she felt as if she were entering a ruin.

She went to her own room and washed away the dust of the journey.  The packet that Kelly had given her she locked away in her own box.  Burke might enter at any moment, and she did not dare to attempt to open the strong-box then.  She knew the money must be returned and speedily; she would not rest until she had returned it.  But she could not risk detection at that moment.  Her courage was worn down with physical fatigue.  She lacked the nerve.

When Burke came in, he found her bringing in a hastily prepared supper.  He took the tray from her and made her sit down while he waited upon her.  Her weariness was too great to hide, and she yielded without demur, lacking the strength to do otherwise.

He made her eat and drink though she was almost too tired even for that, and when the meal was done he would not suffer her to rest in a chair but led her with a certain grim kindliness to the door of her room.