“Oh, don’t!” Sylvia said quickly.  “Really that isn’t fair.  That isn’t—­Burke.  He did it against his judgment.  He did it for my sake.”

“You don’t know much about men, do you?” said Matilda.

“Perhaps not.  But I know that much about Burke.  I know that he plays fair.”

“Even if he kills his man,” suggested Matilda cynically.

“He always plays fair.”  Sylvia spoke firmly.  “But he doesn’t know how to make allowances.  He is hard.”

“Have you found him so?” said Matilda.

“I?” Sylvia looked across at her.

Their eyes met.  There was a certain compulsion in the elder woman’s look.

“Yes, you,” she said.  “You personally.  Has he been cruel to you, Sylvia?  Has he?  Ah no, you needn’t tell me!  I—­know.”  She went suddenly to her, and put her arm around her.

Sylvia was trembling.  “He didn’t—­understand,” she whispered.

“Men never do,” said Matilda very bitterly.  “Love is beyond them.  They are only capable of passion.  I learnt that lesson long ago.  It simplified life considerably, for I left off expecting anything else.”

Sylvia clung to her for a moment.  “I think you are wrong,” she said.  “I know you are wrong—­somehow.  But—­I can’t prove it to you.”

“You’re so young,” said Matilda compassionately.

“No, no, I am not.”  Sylvia tried to smile as she disengaged herself.  “I am getting older.  I am learning.  If—­if only I felt happy about Guy, I believe I should get on much better.  But—­but—­” the tears rose to her eyes in spite of her—­“he haunts me.  I can’t rest because of him.  I dream about him.  I feel torn in two.  For Burke—­has given him up.  But I—­I can’t.”

“Of course you can’t.  You wouldn’t.”  Matilda spoke with warmth.  “Don’t let Burke deprive you of your friends!  Plenty of men imagine that when you have got a husband, you don’t need anyone else.  They little know.”

Sylvia’s eyes went out across the veldt to a faint, dim line of blue beyond, and dwelt upon it wistfully.  “Don’t you think it depends upon the husband?” she said.

CHAPTER VIII

OUT OF THE DEPTHS

That night the thunder rolled among the kopjes, and Sylvia lay in her hut wide-awake and listening.  The lightning glanced and quivered about the distant hills and threw a weird and fitful radiance about her bed, extinguishing the dim light thrown by her night-lamp.

Bill Merston had brought her back a written message from her husband, and she lay with it gripped in her hand.  For that message held a cry which had thrown her whole soul into tumult.

“I want you,” he had written in a hand that might have been Guy’s.  “I can’t get on without you.  I am coming to-morrow to fetch you back—­if you will come.”