“Do not fear, Suzanne.  And now I have heard what you had to say, and I claim your promise.  If it be your will I will kiss you, Suzanne, but not in farewell.”

“Nay,” she answered, “kiss me rather in greeting of the full and beautiful life that stretches before our feet.  Whether the path be short or long, it will be good for us and ever better, but, Ralph, I think that the end will be best of all.”

So he took her in his arms, and they kissed each other upon the lips, and, as they told me afterwards, in that embrace they found some joy.  Why should they not indeed, for if anywhere upon the earth, if it be given and received in youth before the heart has been seared and tainted with bitterness and disillusion, surely in such a pledge as theirs true joy can be found.  Yes, and they did more than this, for, kneeling there upon that rock where once the starving child had knelt in bygone years, they prayed to Him who had brought them together, to Him who had given them hearts to love with and bodies to be loved, and the immortality of Heaven wherein to garner this seed of love thus sown upon the earth, that He would guide them, bless them, and protect them through all trials, terrors, sorrows, and separations.  As shall be seen, this indeed He did.

Then they rose, and having, not without difficulty, lifted the riet-buck ram upon Ralph’s horse and made it fast there, as our hunters know how to do, they started homewards, walking the most part of the way, for the load was heavy and they were in no haste, so that they only reached the farm about noon.

Now I, watching them as we sat at our mid-day meal, grew sure that something out of the common had passed between them.  Suzanne was very silent, and from time to time glanced at Ralph shyly, whereon, feeling her eyes, he would grow red as the sunset, and seeing his trouble, she would colour also, as though with the knowledge of some secret that made her both happy and ashamed.

“You were long this morning in finding a buck, Ralph,” I said.

“Yes, mother,” he answered; “there were none on the flats, for the grass is burnt off; and had not Suzanne beaten out a dry pan for me where the reeds were still green, I think that we should have found nothing.  As it was I shot badly, hitting the ram in the flank, so that we were obliged to follow it a long way before I came up with it.”

“And where did you find it at last?” I asked.

“In a strange place, mother; yes, in that very spot where many years ago Suzanne came upon me starving after the shipwreck.  There in the glade and by the flat stone on which I had lain down to die was the buck, quite dead.  We knew the dell again, though neither of us had visited it from that hour to this, and rested there awhile before we turned home.”

I made no answer but sat thinking, and a silence fell on all of us.  By this time the Kaffir girls had cleared away the meat and brought in coffee, which we drank while the men filled their pipes and lit them.  I looked at Jan and saw that he was making up his mind to say something, for his honest face was troubled, and now he took up his pipe, and now he put it down, moving his hands restlessly till at length he upset the coffee over the table.