He took her hand and kept it.  “Is that going to make any difference?” he said.

She looked at him questioningly.  It was difficult to read his face in the gloom.  “All the difference, I am afraid,” she said.  “You are very generous—­a real good comrade.  If I were a boy, there’s nothing I’d love better.  But, being a woman, I can’t live here alone with you, can I?  Not even in South Africa!”

“Why not?” he said.

His hand grasped hers firmly; she grasped his in return.  “You heard what your Boer friend called me,” she said.  “He wouldn’t understand anything else.”

“I told him to call you that,” said Burke.

“You—­told him!” She gave a great start.  His words amazed her.

“Yes.”  There was a dogged quality in his answer.  “I had to protect you somehow.  He had seen us together at Ritzen.  I said you were my wife.”

Sylvia gasped in speechless astonishment.

He went on ruthlessly.  “It was the only thing to do.  They’re not a particularly moral crowd here, and, as you say, they wouldn’t understand anything else—­decent.  Do you object to the idea?  Do you object very strongly?”

There was something masterful in the persistence with which he pressed the question.  Sylvia had a feeling as of being held down and compelled to drink some strangely paralyzing draught.

She made a slight, half-scared movement and in a moment his hand released hers.

“You do object!” he said.

She clasped her hands tightly together.  “Please don’t say—­or think—­that!  It is such a sudden idea, and—­it’s rather a wild one, isn’t it?” Her breath came quickly.  “If—­if I agreed—­and let the pretence go on—­people would be sure to find out sooner or later.  Wouldn’t they?”

“I am not suggesting any pretence,” he said.

“What do you mean then?” Sylvia said, compelling herself to speak steadily.

“I am asking you to marry me,” he said, with equal steadiness.

“Really, do you mean?  You are actually in earnest?” Her voice had a sharp quiver in it.  She was trembling suddenly.  “Please be quite plain with me!” she said.  “Remember, I don’t know you very well.  I have got to get used to the ways out here.”

“I am quite in earnest,” said Burke.  “You know me better than you knew the man you came out here to marry.  And you will get used to things more quickly married to me than any other way.  At least you will have an assured position.  That ought to count with you.”

“Of course it would!  It does!” she said rather incoherently.  “But—­you see—­I’ve no one to help me—­no one to advise me.  I’m on a road I don’t know.  And I’m so afraid of taking a wrong turning.”

“Afraid!” he said.  “You!”

She tried to laugh.  “You think me a very bold person, don’t you?  Or you wouldn’t have suggested such a thing.”

“I think you’ve got plenty of grit,” he said, “but that wasn’t what made me suggest it.”  He paused a moment.  “Perhaps it’s hardly worth while going on,” he said then.  “I seem to have gone too far already.  Please believe I meant well, that’s all!”