“That’s all,” she said lightly.  “Except—­if you really want to kiss me now and then—­you can do so.  Only don’t be silly about it!”

Burke’s quick movement of surprise told her that this was unexpected.  The two horses had recovered their wind and begun to nibble at one another.  He checked them with a growling rebuke.  Then very quietly he placed Sylvia’s bridle in her hand, and put her from him.

“Thank you,” he said again.  “But you mustn’t be too generous at the outset.  I might begin to expect too much.  And that would be—­silly of me, wouldn’t it?”

There was no bitterness in voice or action, but there was unmistakable irony.  A curious sense of coldness came upon her, as if out of the heart a distant storm-cloud an icy breath had reached her.

She looked at him rather piteously.  “You are not angry?” she said.

He leaned back in the saddle to knock a blood-sucking fly off his horse’s flank.  Then he straightened himself and laughed.

“No, not in the least,” he said.

She knew that he spoke the truth, yet her heart misgave her.  There was something baffling, something almost sinister to her, in the very carelessness of his attitude.  She turned her horse’s head and walked soberly away.

He did not immediately follow her, and after a few moments she glanced back for him.  He had dismounted and was scratching something on the trunk of the blasted tree with a knife.  The withered arms stretched out above his head.  They looked weirdly human in the sunset glow.  She wished he would not linger in that eerie place.

She waited for him, and he came at length, riding with his head up and a strange gleam of triumph in his eyes.

“What were you doing?” she asked him, as he joined her.

He met her look with a directness oddly disconcerting.  “I was commemorating the occasion, he said.

“What do you mean?” she said.

“Never mind now!” said Burke, and took out his pipe.

The light still lingered in his eyes, firing her to something deeper than curiosity.  She turned her horse abruptly.

“I am going back to see for myself.”

But in the same moment his hand came out, grasping her bridle.  “I shouldn’t do that,” he said.  “It isn’t worth it.  Wait till we come again!”

“The tree may be gone by then,” she objected.

“In that case you won’t have missed much,” he rejoined.  “Don’t go now!”

He had his way though she yielded against her will.  They turned their animals towards Brennerstadt, and rode back together over, the sun-scorched veldt.

PART II

CHAPTER I

COMRADES

Some degree of normality seemed to come back into Sylvia’s life with her return to Blue Hill Farm.  She found plenty to do there, and she rapidly became accustomed to her surroundings.