"H’m!" said Carden. "I suppose I’ve got to camp on the floor? It won’t be the first time anyway."

In the meantime he poured out water in the white enamel bowl and got rid of some of the dust under which he was hidden. Afterwards he wiped up with his handkerchief the splashes he had made, and left everything as dainty as before.

"Be careful to leave the wash-hand stand as you find it Talfourd," he said, with something very like command in his voice. But there was no response from the weary Talfourd who was sleeping like a child. Carden smiled and looked about him for wherewith to do his hair, but when he saw the little wooden brush and white bone comb he made shift to groom his back head with the flat of his hand, after which he carefully hid the brush and comb on the principle that what was too good for him was certainly too good for Talfourd. He had discarded his tie in the heat of the day, and several buttons of his thin silk shirt were undone exposing a tanned, muscular throat; he carefully fastened them up, and though they came undone again a moment or two later he did not notice it so concentrated was he on his thoughts, whistling softly under his breath while he moved about the room. When he had quite finished he roused Talfourd, told him to get a bustle on him, and opening the door went back to the living-room.

Candles had been lighted, and the table laid with a spotless white cloth, cups and saucers, tin plates, bone knives and forks, and a large loaf of the brown meal bread known as simmels broot. A fine savoury smell of riet buck crisping and singeing on red embers came from outside where Swartz and Grietje, now reinforced by the old Kaffir who had been picking up mis, were officiating over the fire. Carden sat down by the open window, and presently a door from another part of the house opened and the girl came in, carrying a pot of coffee. She had taken off her cappie and by the flickering candlelight Carden saw the smoky black hair growing above her brows like the glossy spread wings of a raven; the bar of golden freckles that lay across her nose; her silky curved mouth; dewy, mist-coloured eyes that like all eyes that have looked long on great spaces were full of dreams of forests and rivers, and seemed to reflect the shadows of far blue mountains. God had been good to her. She was lovely as a flower.

She sat down on the other side of the table and she and Carden looked at each other. The pupils of the man’s eyes expanded, giving a curious intensity to his glance, and something in hers seemed to leap out like a swift radiant spirit to him and become his. She gave a deep sigh and her lids closed, as though some living vital thing gone out of her, she were dead, or asleep. For an instant she stayed so, then rose quietly and went out of the room. Carden breathing heavily like a man who has been running, and with a rushing sound in his ears, heard her speaking to the servants at the fire, and a moment later Talfourd came in with the bustle he had been told to acquire.

The girl sat with them at dinner, serving them daintily to the luscious venison, and cutting big slices of the simmels broot that tasted like wheat with the heat of the sun still in it. Later she poured them out cups of the coffee whose beans had so lately been roasted over Grietje’s fire. She had little strong hands burnt a pale brown by the sun.

Afterwards the two men walked up and down smoking in the moonlight that was bright as daylight only softer and more tender. It transformed the walls of the mean farmhouse so that they seemed to be made of alabaster with the shadowy branches of the lonely tree etched in ebony upon them. In the distance the broken-down kraal looked a gracious ruin. A little wind had risen and drifting wraiths of cloud gave the impression that the moon was racing across the sky with one lone silver star following her deathlessly. When they came back to the verandah they found the girl sitting on the wooden bench, and with her permission they sat beside her.

"By Jove! What a night!" said Talfourd, and feeling well after a rest and an excellent meal began in a very fine tenor voice to sing:

Have you forgotten, love, so soon, that night, that lovely night of June, When down the tide so idly dreaming, we floated where the moon lay gleaming? My heart was weary and oppressed, by some sweet longing unconfessed, When like an answer to my sighing, your hand in mine was gently lying.

When he had finished, the girl said in a low tremulous voice, "Sing again!"

So he sang Tosti’s Adieu; and then Schubert’s Serenade. Such sounds, such words had perhaps never before been heard in the vicinity of the little farmhouse. Yet who can tell! Carden’s Irish imagination evolved the idea that many beautiful things must have been spoken and thought before the flower-like girl by his side had been born. He stirred a little on the old bench at the thought, and the girl stirred too, putting her hand down beside her as if to rise. Carden did not see her movement, but by some strange instinct his hand went down too and found hers there, and finding it took it. She left it for an instant in his, then tried to draw it away; but he held it closely as he always held things he once took a grip on, whether they belonged to him or not, and she left it there. So they sat listening hand in hand while Talfourd sang his last song to them.

I want no star in Heaven to guide me, I need no sun, no moon to shine, While I have you, dear love, beside me, While I know that you are mine. I need not fear whate’er betide me, for straight and sweet my pathway lies, I want no star in Heaven to guide me, while I gaze in your dear eyes.

I hear no birds at twilight calling, I catch no music in the streams, While your golden words are falling While you whisper in my dreams. Every sound of joy enthralling, speaks in your dear voice alone While I hear your fond lips calling, while you speak to me, my own.

Again the girl’s strong little hand fluttered like a bird under his, but he held it fast. He liked things that tried to flutter away and escape from him.

I want no kingdom where thou art, love, I want no throne to make me blest While within thy tender heart, love, Thou wilt take my heart to rest. Kings must play a weary part, love, thrones must ring with wild alarms, But the kingdom of my heart, love, lies within thy loving arms.

At last, Talfourd proposed to go to bed, but first he wanted to know what the plans were for the morning. Swartz was called up and a discussion held. There were no horses to be had at the farm, for it appeared that old de Beer had taken away the only two he possessed.

Swartz’s plan was to take the best horse of the four, ride on to Webb’s and bring back a fresh span in the evening; and Carden thought it a good plan, if Miss de Beer would allow them to encroach so far upon her hospitality.

"We’ll earn our dinner, if there is any shooting to be got about here," he said.

"Oh, yes; plenty of red-wing partridge, stem buck, and duiker." She was standing opposite him now, having escaped in the general movement.

"Much matatendela also," volunteered the old native man Yacop who had come up to take part in the indaba. Carden laughed.

"They’ll do for you, Tal; guinea-fowl need a sprinting athlete after them, and you are younger than I am." He looked very boyish and happy as he spoke.

"All the more reason why I should go to bed at once," said Talfourd. "Good-night, Miss de Beer, and many, many thanks for pouring oil and wine upon us the way you have done. You have been a good Samaritan indeed!"

"No; it was you who found me by the roadside," she answered with a grave little smile, but she looked at Carden only. He lingered behind with her, hoping she would come and sit beside him again, but she did not move from where she stood leaning against the verandah pole. Swartz and Yacop had gone back to squat by the fire, and the former had produced the inevitable concertina that every Cape boy knows how to manipulate. Carden and the girl stayed listening to his melancholy strains, though it seemed to the man that it was the surging of waves in his ears that he heard, and little drums in all his pulses beating a call to arms.

Dark Carden had been loved many times and loved carelessly back, but never had he met the woman he wanted to take and keep for ever in his life. He had an idea that such a woman existed, in Ireland, if anywhere. Certainly he had long ago decided that he would never marry any but a woman from his own land; and she must be beautiful, accomplished, well-bred, and virtuous at that. Nothing but the best was good enough for Dark Carden. But he was in no great hurry to find this ideal wife. Life and women had treated him too well for him to be in any hurry to change his ways and curtail his liberty. In the meantime he had put away all such thoughts for awhile.

The spell of the wilderness was on him and it was stronger than any spell he had ever felt. Passing strange to find this flower of a girl blossoming here on the very edge of the wild! and more than passing sweet to linger awhile, sharing the moonlight night with her, stirred by the forbidden magic of her girlhood. For girls to him represented forbidden fruit. Everything else in the orchard might be reached after, or climbed for, by those who like himself had the nerve and taste for the pastime. But girls, however ripe and inviting, however close they leaned to the gathering hand, were not for this orchard thief. It was the one clause in his code concerning women which he had never broken. True he had not been greatly tempted, for girls had never held any extraordinary allure for him. The more astonishing then to find himself so troubled by the sight and sound of this one. When he thought of that something which had come winging its way from her eyes to his, and of how her hand had fluttered under his and then lain still, content, the blood tingled through his veins; he was glad to be alive.