A longing to hear the voice which charmed him in spite of the jarring Dutch accent made him break the spell of silence that had fallen on them.

"I do not even know your name," he said in the gentle way he had with women.

"Frances," she answered as gently. "Frances de Beer."

"But you are not Dutch?" he said, though it mattered little to him if she declared herself Siamese or a native of Timbuctoo. The important thing was that she was she, a beautiful, alluring, and forbidden thing.

"No; my mother was an Englishwoman who married a Boer. I am the love child of an Irishman."

A wave of astonishment mingled with pity surged through him at her strange words, and all the tragedy they implied both for her and the mother who had borne her in suffering and sorrow.

And now he knew why this girl’s eyes were deep and full of dreams, why her hair framed her face like the spread wings of a raven, why her mouth was curved to the shape of a kiss incarnate.

She was the child of two eternal things: Love and Sorrow.

He sat very still thinking. The pity of it all took hold of his heart and an impulsive longing rose in him to do something to set things aright as they should be, for this beautiful child. Yet the sins of the fathers! Who can pay for them but the flesh and blood of those who made the debt? Who can set aright what has been wrong from the first? What place in the world was there for this love flower of the desert?

Supposing he, Wilberforce St. John Carden were to marry her! The tingle came into his veins again at the thought, and a song sang in his blood. But his brain knew that it was a fool’s idea. What place in his life for the simple untaught child?

It never occurred to him to doubt whether she would marry him. He was too trained a student in the school of women’s looks not to know what gift she had given him with her eyes whether consciously or unconsciously, at their first encounter. And every instinct urged him to lay hot impulsive hands on it, to take and keep it, as he had taken and kept her hand. But his brain remained cool and clear. He had his code to keep. The girl was impossible to marry. That fact put her out of his reach definitely.

He sighed deeply. He did not know that he sighed, but the girl heard him. It seemed to him that he had come a long way, and passed through some extraordinarily poignant ordeal. As a matter of fact it was only a minute or two since she had last spoken that the girl spoke again, continuing her narrative.

"My mother lived in this house with her Boer husband who was very cruel to her. The only pleasure she had was to sit here sometimes and watch the road. One day when her husband was away in the Transvaal an Irishman came along the road. He was a hunter and an adventurer, and my mother said there was a magic in him that no woman could resist—​unless she were of his own country; for all others he was one of those who must be followed when they call, and I think he must have been, for one so sweet and good as my mother to have forgotten all for him. He took her away to his waggons, and they were going away together to the Interior but a lion killed him over there by the river."

"What was his name?" asked Carden, though he already knew. He knew now whose musical voice had echoed up old memories when first he heard her speak.

"Francis Kavanagh. My mother told me when she was dying, but no one else has ever known, except Grietje—​and now you."

"Why do you tell me?" he asked, though he knew the answer to that too. Perhaps she did not hear, for she gave no response, only made a little foot-note to her tragic tale.

"She made me swear a solemn promise, by her sin and his." A moment later she added:

"But I can never help being glad that I am not the child of a Boer."

"Yet you have stayed on? You still live with the Boer who was so cruel to your mother?" Somehow it was difficult to reconcile this strange fact with her, but doubtless she could explain. She could.

"I do not. He is long ago dead. I live here with Johannes de Beer my husband."

It seemed to Carden that the night changed and turned cold. The stars looked faint and dim, and the moonlight that had been so beautiful erstwhile grew a strange dull grey, the colour of death.

He too felt cold, and old. All the fatigue of the day descended upon him in a heavy cloud, and he suddenly had a great longing for sleep and forgetfulness.

"Ah, yes—​your husband," he said in a vague way, like a man whose thoughts are elsewhere.

"He used to pass this way often with his waggons, and my mother thought he would make me a good husband. When she was dying and I had no one in the world he promised her to marry me and take care of me. I try to mind him well, and he is not unkind."

Later she said: