"Come with you? I’ll see you up a gum tree first."

"Very well. You can take what’s coming to you here instead if you prefer it."

"What do you mean?" Roper’s face was belligerent but he began to back. The other’s eyes, suddenly grown very steel-coloured, had taken a kind of measuring glance into them.

"Just this, that you don’t surely suppose you’re going to be let off for your infernal cheek of the past ten days?--and all the annoyance you have caused this gentleman here?" (He slightly indicated Vivienne.)

"Gentleman!" sniggered Roper, but got no further, for his mouth was stopped in a very rude and unkind manner. Vivienne’s heart gave a leap at the sound of the blow. Never before had she seen a man thrashed, nor any kind of brute violence used by one man to another. A month or two back, the very idea of such a thing would have made her sick, probably have caused her to faint. It is certain that she would, out of very hatred of violence, have sided with the aggressed, whatever his crime, against the aggressor. It showed how Africa had steeled her nerves and readjusted her sense of values that she could sit through the scientific and very thorough punching to which the transport driver was treated, without turning a hair.

Afterwards, Roper’s boys, with a jubilation of manner never before observed in them, removed their master to the shade of his waggon and administered whiskey, while the man Kerry went away to wash his hands and make a quick change. The post-cart driver, a swarthy half-Dutch colonial, who talked the most extraordinary language Vivienne had ever heard, beguiled the tedium of waiting with anecdotes of Roper’s past.

"Maar! it was lekker to see dat slegte skepsel get it good and red! Ach! sis ja, he’s de worst stinkhond on dis road. I knowed him well daar bij de Kaap. Ja wat! he done ten years mealie-meal pap on de Cape Town breakwater already for I.D.B., and another five years in de Bloemfontein tronk for half murdering an arme kind of a Hottentot girl. He hit her on de head with a klip, wat! Allemagtie! sis, yes, he’s a vaabond. I seen him do some dirty jobs between here and Mafeking. Verneuking de Kaffirs and hammering his boys for niks nie. Ek seh ver jou, dere isn’t nothing what dat verdomde bliksem wouldn’t do!"

Vivienne could well believe it. Such of the narrative as was comprehensible to her made her more deeply realise what her danger had been and how much she owed to the protection of Kerry. Her heart glowed with a warmth and gratitude she had never expected to feel again for anyone as she saw him returning, fresh from his dip and change, nonchalant as ever.

"Oh, how good you’ve been to me! What should I have done if you had not come!" she cried, and put out her hands to his in a gesture as charming as it was spontaneous.

"That’s all right," he said easily. But impassivity went out of his face and darkness came into his eyes for a moment as he touched her hands. Then they sat side by side behind the driver while the mules spattered onwards through the mud. She recounted to him all she could remember of her adventure from the time she knew herself lost until Roper’s appearance roused her from the mental lethargy into which panic and privation had plunged her. But of the ten days' gap in between she could tell him no more than if she had returned from the dead.

"Only it seems like a miracle that you should have come upon the scene just when you did!"

"It was lucky I left the coach at Palapye," he said reflectively. But he did not mention why he had done so. "When I got back some days later, there was no way of proceeding except by taking a horse and a couple of bearers."

"Did you hear then that I was lost?"

"Yes," he said briefly. "The Government had people out searching for you, but you must have travelled at a great rate. I expect you’ll want to wire to let people know you are all right as soon as we get near a telegraph office?"

"I suppose so," she said slowly. "Unless it would be possible to just arrive and say nothing as to where I have been, and about that awful time with Roper. I should like that above all." She looked at him appealingly and then at her grimy clothes. "It would be terrible to run the gauntlet like this!"

"We must think up something," he said.

"It is only a matter of clothes to arrive in," she said presently. "I expect I shall find my baggage all safely there."

"Of course. Well, the best plan will be for me to drop you at Fisher’s half-way house, a day’s drive from Buluwayo. I’ll proceed by coach and send you back whatever you need, and some kind of conveyance to come on by. The woman at Fisher’s is a quiet, half-dazed Dutch creature who won’t talk if she sees you enter a young man and go forth a young woman."

She coloured slightly, conscious suddenly of her grimy knickerbockers and rush hat. Then their eyes met and they both fell into a rush of laughter that broke the last strand of stiffness between them and turned them into girl and boy in a world empty of old griefs and pains and full of sunlight.

They discussed without constraint what she needed in the way of clothes, and how to outwit the curiosity of Rhodesia as to her adventure. She told him about her work, and something of her reason why she could not afford to have the truth known. And if his eyes expressed humorous wonder that she should so much mind what the world thought when she was clear of fault, his enthusiasm in plotting ways and means for keeping her doings dark was no less than her own.

"You must just turn up casually at a hotel one day in your cart, and say you’ve been all right—​that you certainly got lost, but found good friends and have been seeing the country and getting `copy' ever since. Chesterfield says: `Never lie, but don’t tell everything.' Let them think what they like. They can’t prove anything. Roper knows that if he speaks I’ll break him to pieces. As for this driver Koos, I can easily square him. He’s an old crony of mine."

The sun pressed down on them hard all day, but there were fresh hills on the horizon, and a gold and emerald scape. The crystal air was vibrant with the odours of rolling leagues of vivid flowers growing close to Earth’s hot brown body. Wild bees hovered over the brilliant cactus blooms and strange-coloured brittle cups of the sugar-bush, then rose, honey-laden, and softly burr-red their way home.

At broad noon, they outspanned by a mule stable on the banks of the Lundi, and made a fire for which Vivienne helped collect sticks. Koos filled the kettle at the river, and Kerry went off on the trail of a little bird that was hopping from tree to tree with an insistent note. It was a honey-bird and its message was clear when Kerry came back carrying two large honey-combs dripping with that golden wine of the veld brewed by the little dark wild bees.

Vivienne thought she had never in her life tasted anything so delicious. Koos was still at the river. She and Kerry sat on two stones, close to each other, and munched the dripping combs, looking at the great fantastic land about them and sometimes into each other’s eyes. She did not know that her youthful beauty had burst through grime and sunburn like a flower from its sheath. He did not know that distance was gone from his eyes again and that they burned dark in his tanned face. But both were aware of the enfolding wings of some great unknown force.

Who drinks Nile water must return to Egypt. Who wears veld-schoens will return to the veld; who tastes of Africa’s perfumed honey can never again content him with the honey of pallid Europe. Vivienne could not know that by her act she was being initiated into the fellowship of that great band whose hearts will never more be free from the thrilling exquisite pain of Africa’s claw. She only knew that some strange taste of strange life went from the honey into her very being and that she had never lived before as she lived in that moment. Life had been waiting for her behind a veil, and now she drew nearer the veil and from behind it came the perfume of stephanotis and cactus bloom and wild honey, the murmuring of rivers, the music of trees. Africa was wild honey, and wild honey was Africa. It had got into her blood. Gone to her brain. Oh, the sweetness of it! The flame of skies and flowers! Time and space here for dreams! Here the rats and mice of life—​malice, intrigue, slander, all the gibbering gnawing things that can make life hell—​were absent. Here one pressed one’s lips to life and felt the thrill of the kiss swinging up and down every vein in one’s body.