“Her life to teach it,” repeated Monsieur Vaucher.  “She gave her life.”  His composure failed him suddenly, and he fell on his knees on the other side of what had been Truda Schottelius, weeping openly.

“She never failed,” he said.  “She never failed.  A great artist, Monsieur, the Schottelius!  She—­she had the sense of climax!”

From the windows of the houses above them, scared curious Jews looked down uncomprehendingly.

III

THE TRADER OF LAST NOTCH

In Manicaland, summer wears the livery of the tropics.  At the foot of the hills north of Macequece every yard of earth is vocal with life, and the bush is brave with color.  Where the earth shows it is red, as though a wound bled.  The mimosas have not yet come to flower, but amid their delicate green—­the long thorns, straight or curved like claws, gleam with the flash of silver.  Palms poise aloft, brilliant and delicate, and under foot, flowers are abroad.  The flame-blossom blazes in scarlet.  The sangdieu burns in sullen vermilion.  Insects fill the world with the noise of their business—­spiders, butterflies, and centipedes, ants, beetles, and flies, and mysterious entities that crawl nameless under foot.  A pea-hen shrieks in the grass, and a kite whistles aloft.  A remote speck in the sky denotes a watchful vulture, alert for any mishap to the citizens of the woods, and a crash of twigs may mean anything from a buck to a rhinoceros.  There is a hectic on the face of nature.

The trader of Last Notch went homewards to his store through such a maze of urgent life, and panted in the heat.  He had been out to shoot guinea-fowl, had shot none and expended all his cartridges, and his gun, glinting in the strong light as he walked, was heavy to his shoulder and hot to his hand.  His mood was one of patient protest, for the sun found him an easy prey and he had yet some miles to go.  Where another man would have said:  “Damn the heat,” and done with it, John Mills, the trader, tasted the word on his lips, forbore to slip it, and counted it to himself for virtue.  He set a large value on restraint, which, in view of his strength and resolute daring, was perhaps not wholly false.  He was a large man, more noticeable for a sturdy solidness of proportion than for height, and his strong face was won to pleasantness by a brown beard, which he wore “navy fash.”  His store, five big huts above the kloof known as Last Notch, was at the heart of a large Kafir population; and the natives, agriculturists by convention and warriors between whiles, patronized him very liberally.  The Englishmen and Portuguese of the country held him in favor, and he enjoyed that esteem which a strong quiet man, who has proved himself to have reserves of violence, commonly wins from turbulent neighbors.