“Suzanne,” he said, “listen to me.  I have always loved you, Suzanne, yes, from the time when I was but a boy:  we used to meet now and again, you know, when you were out riding with the Englishman who is dead”—­here Suzanne’s face changed, then resumed its deathlike mask—­“and always I worshipped you, and always I hated the Englishman whom you favoured.  Well, as you grew older you began to understand and dislike me, and Kenzie began to understand and insult me, and from that seed of slight and insult grew most that is bad in me.  Yes, Suzanne, you will say that I am wicked; and I am wicked.  I have done things of which I should not like to tell you.  I have done such things as you saw last night; I have mixed myself up with Kaffir wizardries and cruelties; I have forgotten God and taken another master, and so far from honouring my own father, why, I struck him down when he was drunk and dared me to do it, and of that blow they say he died.  Well, I owed him nothing less for begetting me into such a world as this, and teaching me how to find the devil before my time.

“And now,” he went on after a pause, for Suzanne answered nothing, “standing before you as I do here with your husband’s blood upon my hands, and seeking your love over his grave, you will look at me and say—­’This man is a monster, a madman, one who should be cast from the earth and stamped deep, deep into hell!’ Yes, all these things I am, and let the weight of them rest upon your head, for you made me them, Suzanne.  I am mad, I know that I am mad, as my father and grandfather were before me, but my madness is mixed with knowledge, for in me runs the blood of the old Pondo witch-doctoress, my grandmother, she who knew many things that are not given to white men.  When I saw you and loved you I became half mad—­before that I was sane—­and when the Englishman, Kenzie, struck me with the whip after our fight at the sheep-kraal, ah! then I went wholly mad, and see how wisely, for you are the first-fruits of my madness, you and the body that to-night rolls to and fro in the ocean.

“You do not answer:  Well, look you, Suzanne, I have won you by craft and blood, and by craft and blood I will keep you.  Here you are in my power, here Heaven itself could not save you from me, in Bull-Head’s secret krantz which none knew of but some few natives.  Choose, therefore; forget the sins that I have committed to win you and become my wife willingly, and no woman shall ever find a better husband, for then the fire and the tempest will leave my brain and it will grow calm as it was before I saw you.

“Have you still no answer?  Well, I will not hurry you.  See, I must go—­do you know what for?  To set scouts lest by any chance your father or other fools should have found my hiding-place, though I think that they can never find it except it be through the wisdom of Sihamba, which they will not seek.  Still I go, and in an hour I will return for your answer, which you must make then, Suzanne, since whether you desire it, or desire it not, fortune has given you to me.  Have you no word for me before I go?”