“And will you?” Sylvia said.

“I suppose you will go in any case,” he said.

“I must go,” she answered steadily.

“I don’t see why,” he said.  “It’s a degrading business.  It won’t do any good.”

Her face quivered.  She controlled it swiftly.  “Will you take me?” she said.

He frowned.  “What is going to happen afterwards?  Have you thought of that?”

She shook her head.  “No.  I can’t see the future at all.  I only know that I must see Guy, and I can’t go back to England.”

“Why not?” he said.

She pressed a hand to her throat as if she found speaking a difficulty.  “I have no place there.  My father has married again.  I must earn my living here somehow.”

He moved abruptly.  “You!” he said again.  She tried to smile.  “You seem to think I am very helpless.  I assure you I am not.  I have managed my father’s house for five years.  I am quite willing to learn anything, and I am very strong.”

“You are very brave,” he said, almost as if he spoke in spite of himself.  “But—­you’ve got to be sensible too.  You won’t marry him?”

She hesitated.  “I must see him.  I must judge for myself.”

He nodded, still frowning.  “Very well,—­if you must.  But you won’t marry him as a way out of your difficulties?  You’ve got to promise me that.”

“Why?” she said.

He answered her with that sudden force which before had startled her.  “Because I can’t stand by and see purity joined to corruption.  Some women will sacrifice anything for sentiment.  You wouldn’t do anything so damn’ foolish as that.”

“No,” said Sylvia.

“Then it’s a promise?” he said.

She held out her hand to him with her brave little smile.  “I promise you I won’t do anything damn’ foolish for the sake of—­sentiment.  Will that do?”

He gripped her hand for a moment.  “Yes.  I think it will,” he said.

“And thank you for being so good to me,” she added.

He dropped her hand, and turned away.  “As to that—­I please myself,” he said briefly.  “Be ready to start in an hour from now!”

CHAPTER VIII

THE COMRADE

That twenty-mile ride in Burke Ranger’s high cart, with a pair of skittish young horses pulling at the reins, was an experience never to be eradicated from Sylvia’s memory.  They followed a course across the veldt that began as a road and after a mile or two deteriorated into a mere rough track.  Up and down many slopes they travelled, but the far hills never seemed to draw any nearer.  Here and there they passed kopjes stacked against the blazing blue of the sky.  They held a weird attraction for her.  They were like the stark bones of the earth pushing up through the coarse desert grasses.  Their rugged strength and their isolation made her marvel.  The veldt was swept by a burning wind.  The clouds of the night before had left no rain behind.