Stella looked down the terraced valley; she turned and looked up at the scarred face of the golden moon, and then she looked at me.  The beauty of the night was about her face, the scent of the night was on her hair, the mystery of the night shone in her shadowed eyes.  She looked at me, I looked on her, and all our hearts’ love blossomed within us.  We spoke no word—­we had no words to speak, but slowly we drew near, till lips were pressed to lips as we kissed our eternal troth.

It was she who broke that holy silence, speaking in a changed voice, in soft deep notes that thrilled me like the lowest chords of a smitten harp.

“Ah, now I understand,” she said, “now I know why we are lonely, and how we can lose our loneliness.  Now I know what it is that stirs us in the beauty of the sky, in the sound of water and in the scent of flowers.  It is Love who speaks in everything, though till we hear his voice we understand nothing.  But when we hear, then the riddle is answered and the gates of our heart are opened, and, Allan, we see the way that wends through death to heaven, and is lost in the glory of which our love is but a shadow.

“Let us go in, Allan.  Let us go before the spell breaks, so that whatever overtakes us, sorrow, death, or separation, we may always have this perfect memory to save us.  Come, dearest, let us go!”

I rose like a man in a dream, still holding her by the hand.  But as I rose my eye fell upon something that gleamed white among the foliage of the orange bush at my side.  I said nothing, but looked.  The breeze stirred the orange leaves, the moonlight struck for a moment full upon the white object.

It was the face of Hendrika, the Babyan-woman, as Indaba-zimbi had called her, and on it was a glare of hate that made me shudder.

I said nothing; the face vanished, and just then I heard a baboon bark in the rocks behind.

Then we went down the garden, and Stella passed into the centre hut.  I saw Hendrika standing in the shadow near the door, and went up to her.

“Hendrika,” I said, “why were you watching Miss Stella and myself in the garden?”

She drew her lips up till her teeth gleamed in the moonlight.

“Have I not watched her these many years, Macumazahn?  Shall I cease to watch because a wandering white man comes to steal her?  Why were you kissing her in the garden, Macumazahn?  How dare you kiss her who is a star?”

“I kissed her because I love her, and because she loves me,” I answered.  “What has that to do with you, Hendrika?”

“Because you love her,” she hissed in answer; “and do I not love her also, who saved me from the babyans?  I am a woman as she is, and you are a man, and they say in the kraals that men love women better than women love women.  But it is a lie, though this is true, that if a woman loves a man she forgets all other love.  Have I not seen it?  I gather her flowers—­beautiful