They sat talking for close on two hours, and at the end of that time April rose with a laugh on her lips and many a light and airy reason why she could not stay. It was too hot, she must rest a little, she had unpacking to do. Even after rising from her chair she lingered as if regretful to go, but they could not persuade her to stay and have tea with them. Presently she sauntered off slowly, leaving a promise that she would dine with them that evening. She did not know why she promised. As she walked away, sauntering, because her feet seemed as lead-laden as her heart, she told herself that it would be better to go and dine with the sharks in Table Bay than sit down again with Ronald Kenna. In her room she lay exhausted and very still for a long time, with the feeling that she had escaped from a red-hot gridiron. She looked in her mirror on entering, expecting to see a vision of Medusa, hair hanging in streaks, eyes distraught, and deep ruts in the cheeks; but her face was charming and composed, and a fixed smile curved her mouth. She shuddered at her own image.

"Lies deform and obscure the soul," she thought, "yet my face bears no mark of the lies I have told this afternoon, nor the hell my spirit has passed through!"

Only when she removed her hat something strange arrested her attention, something that might have been a feather or a flake of snow lying on her luminous black hair just where it grew low in a widow's peak at the centre of her forehead. She made to brush it lightly away, but it stayed, for it was not a feather at all, but a lock of her own hair that had turned white. A little gift from Ronald Kenna!

He had played with her as a cat plays with a mouse before killing it. True, he had not killed her, nor (which would have been the same thing) exposed her mercilessly before Vereker Sarle's eyes. But he had made her pay for his clemency. Probably the cleverness with which she slipped out of the corners into which she was hedged, her skill in darting from under his menacing paw, roused his admiration as well as his sporting instinct. It must have been a great game for him, but hers were the breathless emotions of the helpless mouse whose heart goes pit-a-pat in the fear of being gobbled up the next moment.

It was all very subtle. Sarle never suspected what was going on, so cool and sweet she looked under her shady hat, so unfailing was her composure. He was accustomed to the dry and biting flavour of Kenna's speech, and paid no great heed to it. He believed himself listening to the witty reminiscences of two people with many friends and interests in common, and nothing in the girl's manner as she lied and fenced and swiftly covered up mistakes with jests and laughter betrayed the agony of baiting she was enduring. Kenna was a friend he would have trusted with everything he had in the world; but he was aware of a twist in that friend's nature which made him look at women with sardonic eyes. It had not always been so. Some woman had given that cruel twist to a loyal and trusting nature; some loved hand had dealt the wound that festered in Ronald Kenna's heart; and Sarle, because he guessed this, forgave his friend much. But he would never have forgiven had he known what was passing there under his very eyes. The woman he loved was on the rack, and he never guessed it because she smiled instead of crying out.

And it was all to suffer again that evening. April knew that, as she dressed herself carefully for dinner. There was no mistaking Kenna's pressing request that they should be allowed to come to her table. Sarle had not had time to ask for himself alone. Kenna had forestalled him, and there was double craft in the action: he meant to keep his eye, or rather his claw, on her, while preventing her from being alone with Sarle. If she was in the fray to protect Sarle from the pain of finding her out, he was in it to protect Sarle from her. The situation might have been funny if it had not been grim. She could have laughed at it but for her fear of Kenna, but for an old man's pain and misery, but that the whole miserable structure of deceit rested on a girl's drowned body.

She put on a black gown. It seemed only fitting to absent herself awhile from the felicity of colour. Besides, all her joy in clothes had gone. How gladly would she now have donned her own shabby garments, if with them could have returned the old peace of mind! But even the plain little demi-toilette of black chiffon was peerlessly cut, and her whiteness glowed like a pearl through its filmy darkness. There was no way of dressing her hair that would hide the white feather on her forehead, and after trying once or twice she left it. It looked very remarkable, that touch of age above her young, flower-like face. She could not altogether hate it, for it was a scar won bravely enough, and in desperate battle. Africa had not taken long to put its mark on her!

The men were waiting for her in the lounge; Sarle looking radiantly happy because he was sure of the society of the two people he cared for most in the world; Kenna with a fresh device to try her composure.

"I want to see if you can remember the ingredients of that cocktail I introduced to you at the 'Carlton' on a certain memorable evening when we escaped from Aunt Grizel," he said gaily. She looked at him reflectively. "As I've just been telling Sarle, you learned the recipe by heart, and swore that from henceforth you would use no other."

"Ah, yes," she drawled slowly. "But you take no account of time and my 'Winter-garment of Repentance.' I am a very different girl to the one you knew two years ago."

"I realize that, of course." He grinned with delight at her point. It seemed to him possible that the evening might be even more entertaining than the afternoon.

"This girl never drinks cocktails," she finished quaintly, and he liked her more and more.

Many glances followed them as they passed down the long room, full of rose-shaded candles and the heavy scent of flowers. Pretty women are not scarce in Cape Town, especially at the season when all Johannesburg crowds to the sea, but there was a haunting, almost tragic loveliness about April that night that set her apart from the other women, and drew every eye. Sarle felt his pulses thrill with the pride that stirs every man when the seal of public admiration is set upon the woman he loves. As he looked at her across the table he suddenly recalled some little verses he had found scrawled in Kenna's writing on an old book once when they were away together on the veld:

My love she is a lady fair,
A lady fair and fine;
She is to eat the rarest meat
And drink the reddest wine.

Her jewelled foot shall tread the ground
Like a feather on the air;
Oh! and brighter than the sunset
The frocks my love shall wear!

If she be loyal men shall know
What beauty gilds my pride;
If she be false the more glad I,
For the world is always wide.

Poor Kenna! She had been false: that was why he had sought the wide world of the veld and renounced women. Sarle, certain of the innate truth and loyalty of the girl opposite him as of her pearl-like outer beauty, could pity his friend's fate from the bottom of his soul. But being a man, he did not linger too long with pity; hope is always a pleasanter companion, and hope was burning in him like a blue flame: the hope that within an hour or two he would hold this radiant girl in his arms and touch her lips. He thought of the garden outside, full of shadows and scented starlight, and looking at the curve of her lips, his eyes darkened, and strange bells rang in his ears. She had eluded him for many nights, although she knew he loved her. He had kissed her fingers and the palm of her hand, but tonight out in the starlit garden he meant to kiss her lips. The resolve was iron in him. He hardly heard what the other two were saying. He was living in a world of his own. April, weary of Kenna's cruel heckling, turned to him for a moment's relief, and what she saw in his eyes was wine and oil for her weariness, but it made her afraid, not only because of the perilous longing in her to give him all he asked, but because Kenna sat alert as a lynx for even a smile she might cast that way. It was very certain that no opportunity would be given them for being a moment together; and divining something of Sarle's resolute temper, she could not help miserably wondering what would happen when it came to a tussle of will between the two men.

However, even the careful plans of first-class lynxes go awry sometimes. A waiter came to the table to say that Kenna was wanted on the telephone.

"Tell them I'm engaged," was the curt answer.

"It's his Honour Judge Byng, sir," said the waiter in an awed manner, "and I have already told him you were at dinner. He says it is most important."

Kenna glared at the man, then at his companions. The latter appeared placidly indifferent. April sipped her wine, and her eyes roamed round the room whilst she exchanged idle talk with Sarle. But the moment Kenna's back was turned indifference fell from them; they looked at each other eagerly like two school-children in a hurry to take advantage of the teacher's absence.

"Darn him!" muttered Sarle. "I wish Byng would keep him all night."

"He will be back directly," she said breathlessly. Sarle glanced at the plates. They were only at the fish.

"He's got to finish his dinner, I suppose," he said grudgingly. "But can't we escape afterwards? I want to show you the garden."

"He's sure to stay with us," she answered tragically.

"Oh—but to Halifax with him!" began Sarle.

"I know, but we mustn't offend him," she implored hastily. "He . . . he's such a good fellow."

"Of course I realize he is an old friend of yours, and likes to be with you, and all that," Sarle conceded. "But so do I. I want to show you the garden . . . by myself." He looked pleadingly and intently into her eyes until her lids fell and a soft flush suffused her cheeks. His glance drank in every detail of her fresh, sweet beauty.

"What's that funny little patch of white on your hair?" he asked suddenly. "I have been puzzling about it all the evening. Is it a new fashion?" She shook her head.

"He's coming back." From where she sat she could see Kenna the moment he entered the room.

"Promise you will come to the garden," he urged.

"Yes," she said softly.

"No matter how long it takes to get rid of him?"

"Yes."

"Even if we have to pretend to say good-night? . . . I shall be waiting for you . . . you'll come?" She nodded; there was no time for more. Kenna was upon them, very cross at having his dinner interrupted, and with an eye cocked searchingly upon April. But neither she nor Sarle gave any sign of what had passed.

Later, when they were round their coffee in the lounge, the hall-porter brought her some letters on a salver. She saw Kenna looking at her satirically as she examined the superscriptions. All were addressed to Lady Diana Vernilands, and the problem of what she was to do about letters was one not yet considered.

"Don't let me keep you from your interesting correspondence," he remarked, and April started, to find that they were alone. Sarle had gone across to Leon to get some cigars.

"Oh, there's nothing that can't wait," she said hastily, and pushed them into her hand-bag.

"I agree"—he assumed a bright, conversational air—"that some things are even more interesting for being waited for; the explanation of your conduct, for instance!"

She looked at him steadily, though her heart was beating rapidly, for this moment had come upon her with sudden unexpectedness.

"You appear to suffer from curiosity?"

"Don't call it suffering." His tone was suave. "I am enjoying myself immensely."

"I shall try not to do anything to interfere with your amusement," she remarked, after a pause.

"That will be kind. The situation piques me. I should like to watch it to a finish without contributing to the dÉnouement; unless"—he looked at her significantly—"I am obliged to."

"I cannot believe anything or any one could oblige you to be disagreeable, Sir Ronald," she jeered softly. He meditated with an air of gravity.

"There are one or two things, though; friendship, for instance—I would do quite disagreeable things for the sake of a friend." She was silent.

"I might even vex a woman I admire as much as I do you, to save a friend from disaster."

Thus they sparred, the attention of each fixed on Sarle, so gay and debonair, buying cigars within a stone's throw of them. Having finished with Leon, he attempted to rejoin them, but the lounge was crowded, and at every few steps some old friend entangled him.

"There is nothing much to admire about me." In spite of herself a note of desolation crept into her voice. Kenna looked at her in surprise. This was a new side to the adventuress!

"Au contraire. Apart from the inestimable gifts of youth and beauty the gods have bestowed, you possess a quality that would draw admiration from the most unwilling—courage."

She bowed mockingly. Sarle was escaping from his many friends at last and returning. Kenna rapped out what he had to say sharply, though his voice was low.

"He is a good fellow, and I do not care to give him pain—unless you force me to."

He searched her face keenly, but found no trace there of anything except a courteous interest in his conversation. She did not mean him to guess how much Vereker Sarle's happiness meant to her.

"Anything else?" she dared him.

"Well, of course I should like to know where the real Lady Diana is," he said carelessly. That gave her a bad moment. Mercifully, the waiter created a diversion by knocking a coffee-cup over as he removed the tray, and Sarle, returning, had some news for Kenna of a mutual friend's success in some political campaign. This gave her a short space in which to recover. But she was badly shaken, and wondered desperately how she was going to get through the rest of the evening if Kenna clung. They sat talking in a desultory fashion, each restlessly watching the others. There was a clatter of conversation about them, and in the adjoining drawing-room a piano and violins had begun to play. The air was warm and heavy. For some reason April could not fathom the French windows had been closed, and there was a swishing, seething sound outside, as though the sea was rushing in tides through the garden. She felt curiously unstrung. It was not only the nervous effect of having these two men so intent upon her every word and movement, but there was something extraordinarily disturbing in the atmospheric conditions that made the palms of her hands ache and her scalp prickle as from a thousand tiny thorns.

"I don't think I can bear this place much longer," she said suddenly, even to herself unexpectedly. "Wouldn't it be cooler out where we were sitting this afternoon?"

"I think so," said Sarle briskly. "Besides I want to show you the garden." He rose, but Kenna rose too.

"My dear fellow," he expostulated gently, "don't you realize there is a south-easter blowing? We can't subject Lady Di to the curse of the Cape tonight. It always affects new-comers most disagreeably. In fact, I think she is suffering from it already."

"Is that what is making me prickle all over and feel as though I want to commit murder?" she inquired, with rather a tremulous smile. "What is this new African horror?"

"Only our Cape 'mistral.'" Sarle looked at her anxiously. "It's blowing a bit hard in the trees outside, but——"

"I thought that was the sea. If it's only the wind I don't mind." She rose, half hesitating. "I love wind."

"I think it would be very unwise of you to go," said Kenna quietly. Sarle thought him infernally interfering, though he heard nothing in the words but friendly counsel. To April the remark contained a threat, and she gave way with as good a grace as she might, holding out her hand to say good-night to them.

"Perhaps I had better postpone acquaintance with your curse as long as possible." The words were for Kenna, her smile for Sarle.

"I will see you to the lift," the latter said. Kenna could hardly offer to come too, but as it was only just across the lounge to the hall, and within range of his eye, perhaps he thought it did not matter. He could not know that Sarle, sauntering with a careless air beside her, was saying very softly and only for her ear:

"It is quite early. If instead of taking the lift again you came down the main staircase, you would find a door almost opposite, leading into the garden. I think you promised?"

His voice was very pleading. She did not answer, nor even turn his way. But once safely in the lift, out of the range of Kenna's gimlet eyes, over the shoulders of the stunted brown lift-boy she let her glance rest in his, and so told him that he would have his wish.

There must have been some witchery in that south-east wind. She knew it was madness to go, that she was only entangling herself more closely in a mesh which could not be unravelled for many days. Yet within half an hour she was out there in the darkness, with the wind tearing at her hair and flickering her cloak about her like a silken sail. When she closed the door behind her and went forward it was like plunging into an unknown purple pool, full of dark objects swaying and swimming beside her in the fleeting darkness. Tendrils of flowering plants caught at her with twining fingers. A heavily scented waxen flower, pallid as the face of a lost soul, stooped and kissed her from a balcony as she passed. The young trees were like slim girls bowing to each other with fantastic grace; the big trees stood together "terrible as an army with banners," raging furiously in an uproar like the banging of a thousand breakers upon a brazen beach. The sky was full of wrack, with a snatch of moon flying across it, and a scattering of lost stars.

She felt more alive and vital than ever in her life before. The clamour of the storm seemed to be in her veins as well as in her ears. She was glad with a wild, exultant happiness of which she had never dreamed, when she found herself snatched by strong arms and held close, close. The maelstrom whirled about her, but she was clasped safe in a sheltered place. Sarle kissed her with long, silent kisses. There was no need for words, their lips told the tale to each other. It seemed to her that her nature expanded into the vastness of the sea and the wind and the stars, and became part with them. . . . But all the while she was conscious of being just a slight, trembling girl held close against a man's heart—the right man, and the right heart! She had come across the sea to find him, and Africa had given them to each other. She lost count of time and place and terror. The burden of her trouble mercifully left her. She remembered only that she and Vereker Sarle loved each other and were here alone together in this wind-wracked wilderness of perfumed darkness and mystery. Her ears and mind were closed to everything but his whispering words:

"My darling, my darling . . . I have waited for you all my life . . . women have been nothing to me because I knew you were somewhere in the world. I have crossed the veld and the seas a thousand times looking for you, and have found you at last! I will never let you go."

He kissed her throat and her eyes. More than ever her whiteness shone in the gloom with the luminousness of a pearl.

"Your beauty makes me tremble," he whispered in her hair. "Darling, say that you love me and will give yourself to me for ever."

"I love you, Vereker. . . ."

"Call me Kerry."

"I love you, Kerry. I give myself to you."

She rejoiced in her beauty, because it was a precious gift to him.

"You don't know what you mean to me, Diana—a star dropped out of heaven; the pure air of the veld I love; white lilies growing on a mountain top. Thank God you are all these things without any darkness in you anywhere. It is the crown of a man's life to love a woman like you."

"Let me go, Kerry," she said. "It is late. I must go."

He did not notice that her voice was broken with tears, for the wind swept her words up to the trees and the boiling wrack of clouds beyond. But he knew that it was time for her to go. That wild pool of love and wind and stars was too sweet and dangerous a place for lovers to linger in. He wrapped her cloak about her and sheltered her back to the door from which she had emerged.

"Tomorrow morning . . . I shall be waiting for you in the lounge. We will settle then how soon you will give yourself to me—it must be very soon, darling. I am forty-four, and can't wait a moment."

The light from the door fell on his face and showed it gay as a boy's. Her face was hidden, or he must have, recognized the misery stamped upon it.

* * * * * *

In the morning light it seemed to her that the finger of snow on her hair had broadened a little. It was five o'clock of an ice-green dawn, with the mountain like an ashen wraith outside, and the wind still raging. South-easters last for three days, Kenna had said, and she shuddered to look at that unseen power whipping the leaves from the trees, beating down the beauty of the garden, tearing the mists from the mountain's side, only to pile them higher upon the summit. It took courage to go out in that wind, but it took greater courage to stay and meet Vereker Sarle. So she was dressed and hatted, with a small suit-case in her hand, and starting on a journey to the Paarl. She did not know what "the Paarl" was, nor where! Her first introduction to that strange name was at midnight, when she found it on one of the letters addressed to Diana. All the other letters were of no consequence, but the Paarl letter seemed to solve for her the pressing and immediate problem of how to escape from the terror of exposure by Kenna before the loved eyes of Sarle. It was from the parson's daughter, that eccentric painter who lived somewhere on the veld, and whose home was to have been Diana's destination. "Clive Connal" she signed herself, and said she hoped Diana would take the morning train, as it was the coolest one to travel by, and arrive at the Paarl by 8.30, where a mule-cart would be waiting to take her to Ho-la-lÉ-la.[1] So April meant to follow instructions and trust to luck to see her through. Whatever happened, it could not be more terrible than to read disgust and disillusion in Vereker Sarle's eyes.

She stole down the stairs like a shadow, and found a sleepy clerk in the booking-office. It was simple to explain to him that she was going away for a few days, but wished her room kept on, and everything left as it was. She would send a wire to say at what date she would be returning. There was no difficulty about the bill, for, fortunately, Bellew had supplied her with plenty of money, saying it was Diana's, and that she would have wished it to be used. It was too early for a taxi to be got, even by telephoning, but the porter caught a stray rickshaw that chanced to be passing, and April had her first experience of flying downhill behind a muscular black man with feathers in his hair and bangles on his feet. Before she reached the station her veil and hair were in streamers, and her scalp was almost torn from her head, but the serpent jaune which had gnawed her vitals all night had ceased from troubling, and joy of living glowed in her once more. She could not help it; there was something in the air and the wind and the blaze of Africa that made for life, and thrust out despair. It swept away misery as the south-easter had swept the skies, leaving them blue and clear as a flawless turquoise.

She caught her train, and in fate's good hour reached the Paarl, which proved to be a town of one long street, decked with stately oaks, and mellowed old Dutch homes. The mule-cart was waiting for her, and on the driver's seat a woman with the austere features and blue, pure, visionary eyes of Galahad, the stainless knight. But she was dressed in breeches and a slouch hat, a cigarette hung from the corner of her mouth, and she beckoned April gladsomely with an immense cowthong whip.

"Come on! I was afraid you'd shirk the early train, but I see you're the stuff. Hop in!"

April did her best, but hopping into a Cape cart that has both steps missing takes some practice. The mules did most of the hopping; she scrambled, climbed, sprawled, and sprained herself all over before she reached the vacant seat, already encumbered with many parcels. With a blithe crack of the whip and a string of strange words flung like a challenge at her mules, Miss Connal got under way.

The farm was six miles off, but ere they had gone two April knew the painter as well as if they had been twin sisters. Clive Connal hadn't a secret or a shilling she would not share with the whole world. She used the vocabulary of a horse-dealer and the slang of a schoolboy, but her mind was as fragrant as a field that the Lord hath blessed, and her heart was the heart of a child. It was shameful to deceive such a creature, and April's nature revolted from the act. Before they reached the farm she had confessed her identity—explaining how the change had come about, and why it was important to go on with the deception. Too much explanation was not necessary with a person of Clive's wide understanding. No vagaries of behaviour seemed to shock or astonish her large human soul. She merely, during the relation of Diana's tragedy, muttered once or twice to herself:

"The poor thing! Oh! the poor thing!" and looked at April as though she too were "a poor thing," instead of a fraud and an adventuress to be abjured and cast out. For the first time since her mother's death the girl felt herself sheltering in the warmth of womanly sympathy, and the comfort of it was very sweet.

"Don't worry too much," said Clive cheerfully.

"Tout s'arrange: that's my motto. Everything comes straight if you leave it alone."

A cheerful motto indeed, and one seeming to fit well with the picture of the old farmhouse lying in the morning sunshine. Low-roofed and white-walled, it was tucked under the shelter of the Qua-Qua mountains, with apricot orchards stretching away on either side. Six immense oaks spread their untrimmed branches above the high stoep, and before the house, where patches of yellow-green grass grew ragged as a vagabond's hair, a Kerry cow was pegged out and half a dozen black babies disported themselves amongst the acorns. Dozens of old paraffin tins stained with rust, and sawed-off barrels bulging asunder lined the edge of the stoep, all filled with geraniums, begonias, cacti, red lilies, and feathery bamboos. Every plant had a flower, and every flower was a brilliant, vital thing. Other decorations were a chopping-block, an oak chest, blistered and curled by the sun, several wooden beds with the bedding rolled up on them, and two women, who smiled a welcome. These were Ghostie, and belle HelÈne—the only names April ever knew them by.

"Welcome to the home for derelicts, broken china, and old crocks," they said. "You may think you are none of these things, but there must be something the matter with you or you wouldn't be here."

"Too true!" thought April, but smilingly answered, "There doesn't seem much wrong with you!"

"Oh, there is, though. Ghostie is a journalist, recovering from having the soul trampled out of her by Johannesburg Jews. I am a singer with a sore throat and a chronic pain in my right kidney that I am trying to wash away with the juice of Clive's apricots and the milk from Clive's cows."

"Nuff sed," interposed Clive. "Let's think about some grub. I've brought back sausages for breakfast."

Meekie, the mother of the black babies, had fetched in the parcels from the cart, and already there was a fizzling sound in the kitchen. The rest of the household proudly conducted April to the guest-chamber. There was nothing in it except a packing-case and a bed, but the walls were covered by noble studies of mountains, Clive pointed out some large holes in the floor, warning April not to get her foot twisted in them.

"I don't think there are any snakes here," she said carelessly. "There is an old cobra under the dining-room floor, and we often hear her hissing to herself, but she never does any harm."

"It is better to sleep on the stoep at night," Ghostie recommended.
"We all do."

Before the afternoon April had settled down among them as if she had lived there always. Sarle and his kisses seemed like a lost dream; the menace of Kenna was forgotten. For the first time in her existence she let herself drift with the tide, taking no thought for the morrow nor the ultimate port at which her boat would "swing to." It was lotus-eating in a sense, yet none of the dwellers at Ho-la-lÉ-la idled. It is true that Ghostie and belle HelÈne were crocks, but they worked at the business of repairing their bodies to tackle the battle of life once more. April soon discovered that they were only two of the many of Clive's comrades who came broken to the farm and went away healed. Clive was a Theosophist: all men were her brothers, and all women her sisters; but those especially among art-workers who fell by the wayside might share her bread and blanket. They called her Old Mother Sphinx, because of her inscrutable eyes, and the tenderness of her mothering.

She herself never stopped working, and her body was hard as iron from long discipline. She rose in the dawn to work on her lands, hoeing, digging her orchards, and tending her cattle in company with her coloured labourers. It was only at odd moments or during the heat of the day that she painted, and all the money she made with paint was swallowed up by the farm, which did not pay, but which was the very core of her heart.

Impossible for April to be in such company and not work too, even if her thoughts had not demanded occupation. So, first she mended the clothes of everybody, including Meekie's ragged piccanins; then she went to the Paarl, bought a pot of green paint, and spent days of sheer forgetfulness smartening up the rusty paraffin tins and barrels, and all the bleared and blistered shutters and doors and sills of the farm, that had not known paint for many years.

At mid-day they bathed in a tree-shaded pool that had formed in the bed of a stream running across the farm. They had no bathing frocks but their skins, and sometimes Clive, sitting stark on the bank, palette in hand, painted the others as they tumbled in the dark brown water, sporting and splashing like a lot of schoolboys. Afterwards they would mooch home through the shimmering noontide heat, deliciously tired, wrapped in reflection and their towels. Ghostie provided a perpetual jest by wearing a smart Paris hat with a high cerise crown. She said it had once belonged to the fastest woman in South Africa, who had given it to her as a joke, but she did not mention the lady's name, nor say in what her "fastness" consisted. This was characteristic of visitors at Ho-la-lÉ-la: they sometimes stated facts, but never talked scandal. When April asked them to call her by her own name, instead of "Diana," they did so without comment, accepting her as one of themselves, and asking no questions about England, the voyage, or the Cape. The scandalous tragedy of the April Fool had never reached them, and if it had they would have taken little interest except to be sorry for the girl.

In the evenings when work was put away Clive played to them on the 'cello.

"I was determined to have music in my life," she told April. "And as you can't lug a piano and musician all over the shop with you, I saw no way of getting it but to darn well teach myself."

And very well she had done it, though why she had chosen a 'cello, which also needed some lugging, no one knew but herself. Sitting with it between her heavy boots and breeched legs, the eternal cigarette drooping from her mouth, she looked more than ever like Galahad, her blue austere gaze seeming to search beyond the noble mountain tops of her own pictures for some Holy Grail she would never find. No complicated music was hers, just grand, simple things like Handel's "Largo," Van Biene's "Broken Melody," "Ave Maria," or some of Squire's sweet airs.

Sometimes at night they went out and climbed upon a huge rock that stood in the apricot orchard. It was big enough to build a house on, and called by Clive her Counsel Rock, because there she took counsel with the stars when things went wrong with the farm. Lying flat on their backs they could feel the warmth of the day still in the stone as they gazed at the purple and silver panoply of heaven spread above them, and Clive would commune with blue-rayed Sirius and his dark companion; the Gemini, those radiant twins; Orion's belt in the centre sky preciously gemmed with celestial diamonds; Canopus, a calm, pale yellow star, the largest in our universe; Mars, gleaming red as a madman's eye; Venus springing from the horizon, the Pleiades slinking below it. The "galloping star" she claimed as her own on account of its presumed horsiness.

"It's a funny thing," she said. "My mother and father were gentle, bookish creatures with no understanding of animals. Even if a pony had to be bought for us children, every male thing of the family—uncles, nephews, tenth cousins—was summoned from every corner of England for his advice and experience. Yet these unsophisticated beings have a daughter like me—born into the world a full-blown horse-dealer! To say nothing of mules. You can believe me or believe me not," she added bragfully, "but there is no one in this land of swindles who knows more about mules than I do."

They chose to believe her, especially after hearing her haggling and bartering with some of the itinerant dealers who visited the farm from time to time.

"I don't know vy ve can't do pizness today! I got no profit in anyting. I just been here for a friend"—thus the dealer.

"Ah! I know who your friend is," Clive would jeer from the stoep. "You keep him under your own hat. But don't come here expecting to swop a beautiful mule that cost me 20 pounds for that skew-eyed crock that will go thin as a rake after three weeks on the sour veld, a 10 pound note thrown in, and taking me for a fool into the bargain. Your horse is worth 15 pounds, and not a bean more."

"I also must lif!"—the whine of the Jew.

"I don't see the necessity." Clive shamelessly plagiarized Wilde,
Plato, or the holy prophets when it suited her.

"Vot, you know! You can't do pizness with a womans!" The dealer would weep tears of blood, but Clive made the bargain.

A week slid past, and April barely noticed its passing. No word came from the outer world. It was not the custom to read newspapers at Ho-la-lÉ-la, and all letters were stuffed unopened into a drawer, in case they might be bills. Close friends were wise enough to communicate by telegram, or, better still, dump themselves in person upon the doorstep. The only reason that April had been expected and fetched was that a "home letter" had heralded the likely advent of Lady Diana, and given the date and hotel at which she would be staying. Home letters were never stuffed away unopened.

Late one afternoon, however, there was an unexpected announcement. The boch-ma-keer-ie bird began to cry in the orchard, and Clive said it was a surer sign of visitors than any that came from the telegraph office.

"Tomorrow is Sunday. We'll have visitors, sure as a gun," she prophesied.

April quailed. She could not bear the peaceful drifting to end, and wished for no reminder of that outer world where Bellew, the mail-boat for England, and the dreary task of breaking an old man's heart awaited her. Sometimes in spite of herself she was obliged to consider these things, and the considering threw shadows under her eyes and hollowed her cheeks. Sarle, too, though he was a dream by day, became very real at night when she should have been dreaming. She knew now that she could never escape from the memory of him, and the thought that he was suffering from her silence and defection tortured her. What must he think of her, slinking guiltily away without a word of explanation or farewell? Doubtless Kenna would set him right! "Faithful are the wounds of a friend," she thought bitterly. Better far and braver to have done the explaining and setting right herself, if only she could have found some way of releasing herself from the compact of silence made with Diana and Bellew.

Sunday, morning dawned very perfectly. They were all sleeping on the stoep, their beds in line against the wall, Clive upon the oak chest, which her austere self-discipline commanded. At three o'clock, though a few stars lingered, the sky was already tinting itself with the lovely lustre of a pink pearl. No sound broke the stillness but the breathing of the sleepers and the soft perpetual dropping of acorns from the branches overhead.

The peace and beauty of it smote April to the heart. She pressed her fingers over her eyes and tears oozed through them, trickling down her face. When at last she looked again the stars were gone and the sky was blue as a thrush's egg, with a fluff of rose-red clouds knitted together overhead and a few crimson rags scudding across the Qua-Quas. A dove suddenly cried, "Choo-coo, choo-coo," and others took up the refrain, until in the hills and woods hundreds of doves were greeting the morning with their soft, thrilling cries. Fowls straying from a barn near by started scratching in the sand. The first streak of sunshine shot across the hills and struck a bush of pomegranates blossoming scarlet by the gate.

Presently the farm workers began to come from their huts and file past the stoep towards the outhouses. Julie, the Cape foreman, with a right leg longer than the left, was the first to stagger by.

"Moorer, Missis!" he said, with a pull of his cap and a swift respectful glance at the stoep. Clive, awake by now on her oak chest, responded absently without raising her head from the pillow.

"Moorer, Julie!"

Next, Isaac, whose legs were so formed that when he stood still they described a circle, and when he moved the circle became a triangle.

"Moorer, Missis!" said he.

"Moorer, Isaac!"

Jim, the cowherd, had a hare-lip and no roof to his mouth, and was so modest that he turned his head away when he lisped his salutation to the stoep.

"Moor-ler, Mithis!"

"Moorer, Jim!"

After a few moment's silence a voice from one of the beds was heard.

"Is the file-past of the Decrepits over? May one now sleep for a while?"

"This place ought to be called des Invalides," grumbled another.

Clive laughed her large, blithe laugh.

"At any rate, there's nothing wrong with me," she proclaimed, and sprang with one leap into her top-boots. Passing April's bed she touched the girl's eyelids tenderly, and her finger-tips came away wet.

"Nor with our little April, I hope—except a passing shower! You had better come up the lands with me this morning, and plant trees."

That was Clive's cure for all ills of the body and soul: to plant trees that would grow up and benefit Africa long after the planters were dead and forgotten. No one ever left Ho-la-lÉ-la without having had a dose of this medicine, and many an incipient forest lay along the valleys and down the sides of the Qua-Quas. So behold April an hour or two later, faring forth with a pick and a basket full of saplings, followed by Clive leading the Kerry cow, who was sick and needed exercise.

They lunched in the open, resting from their labours and savouring the sweetness of food earned by physical labour. Care was stuffed out of sight, dreams and ghosts faded in the clear sun-beaten air, and again April realized what life could mean in this wonderful land, given the right companionship, and a clean heart. But Clive, with arms clasped about her knees, sat munching apricots and staring with a strange sadness at her forests of baby trees. There was an unfulfilled look on her face, spite of living her own life, and following her star. Neither Africa nor life had given her all she needed.

Later they wended their way back full of the happy weariness engendered by honest toil. But nearing home Clive lifted her nose, and sniffing the breeze like a wild ass of the desert sensing unfamiliar things scowled bitterly.

"Petrol!" she ejaculated. "One of those stinking motor-cars! Why can't people use horses, like gentlemen? What's the matter with a nice mule, even?"

As they slouched warily round the house and came in view of the stoep she emitted a staccato whistle of dismay. Tethered out upon the vagabondish grass was—not one motor-car, but three! An opulent thing of blinking brass and crimson leather arrogated to itself the exclusive shade of the largest tree; a long grey torpedo affair of two seats occupied the pasturage of the Kerry cow; and blistering in the sunshine, with several fowls perched upon it, was an ancient Ford wearing the roystering air of a scallywag come home for good.

"That old boch-ma-keer-ie bird knew something!" muttered the painter.
"I don't like the look of this!"

They paused to take counsel of each other, then presently advanced, Clive approaching her own front door with the stealthy glide of a pickpocket, April tip-toeing behind her. The idea was to get indoors without being seen, listen in the hall to discover whether the visitors were agreeable ones, and if not, to take refuge in the kitchen until they had departed. Unfortunately one of them came out of the front door to shake his pipe on the stoep as Clive and April reached the steps.

"Why, it's old Kerry Sarle!" cried Clive heartily, and stealth fell from her. She beamed with happiness, and shook his hand unceasingly, pouring forth questions like water.

"When did you get back? Why didn't you come before? What did you bring a crowd for? Who have you got with you?"

"Only Kenna. The crowd doesn't belong to me. They've come to buy pictures or something, and are in your studio. I haven't seen them. We are in the dining-room."

His speech was disjointed and halting, his amazed gaze fixed upon the girl standing thunderstruck at the foot of the steps. Clive forged on into the house with a gloomy eye; she hated to sell pictures, even when she needed the money. April and Sarle were left together, and in a moment he was down the step by her side. They stood looking at each other with the memory of their last kiss kindling between them. He had been bitterly hurt, but he loved and trusted her beyond all things that were, and could not conceal the happiness in his eyes. Only for the open studio windows and the round-eyed piccannins, he would have gathered her to his heart; as it was he gathered her hands instead and held them where they could feel its beating.

"Darling! Thank God I have found you."

Kenna had not betrayed her, then. The blow was still to fall. She managed to smile a little, but she had turned very pale, and there was something in her silence chilling even to his ardent spirit.

"You don't think I tracked you down? We motored out here with no idea but to see Clive Connal——"

"Of course not." She strove to speak casually. "I couldn't expect to have a friend like Clive all to myself, but I never dreamed you knew her."

"She has been my friend for twelve years or more."

"Yes," said Kenna's voice from the stoep, "we are all old friends together here."

He had come out with belle HelÈne, and stood smiling upon them. The old malice was there, with some new element of strain that made him look more sardonic, yet strangely pathetic to the girl who feared him.

"Who'd have thought to find you here, Lady Di?" he sneered softly.
"Life is full of pleasant surprises!"

They all went into the dining-room, where tea was laid, and Clive brought in her picture-dealers, who proved to be two globe-trotters anxious to acquire specimens of South African art. Someone had told them that Clive Connal stood top of the tree amongst Cape painters, so they had spent about seven pounds ten on a car from Cape Town in the hope of getting some rare gem for a couple of guineas. One was a fat and pompous ass, the other a withered monkey of a fellow who hopped about peering through his monocle at the pictures on the walls, uttering deprecating criticism in the hope of bringing down prices.

"This sketch of Victoria Falls is not bad," he piped, gazing at a thing of tender mists and spraying water above a titanic rock-bound gorge. "The left foreground wants breaking up a bit, though!"

"I think you want breaking up a bit," muttered Clive, who had already made up her mind to sell him nothing, and looking longingly at her sjambok lying on the sideboard. "Where are Ghostie and the others?" she demanded.

"They had tea by themselves in Ghostie's room." Belle HelÈne proffered the statement rather hesitatingly, and no wonder, in a house where "les amies de mes amis sont mes amies" was the rule. It took more than that to offend Clive, but she looked astonished.

"Oh, all right, then, let's have ours," she said, and sitting at the head of her table held the loaf of home-made brown bread firmly to her breast, carving hefty slices and passing them on the point of the knife to belle HelÈne, who jammed them from a tin. Customs were simple and the fare frugal at Ho-la-lÉ-la. There were only two teaspoons between six, as Ghostie had the other two in her bedroom. The jam unfortunately gave out before the globe-trotters got theirs, but there was some good dripping—if they had only happened to like dripping. They seemed pained before the end of the meal, and one was heard to murmur to the other as they went out:

"Would you believe that her father was a clergyman? Bread and dripping! and jam scratched out of a tin! This comes of living in the wilds of Africa, I suppose. An entire loss of culture!"

The daughter of the clergyman must have surprised them a good deal by her unexpected spurt of holiness in refusing to sell pictures on a Sunday. They wound up their old taxi and went away very much annoyed at having come so far for nothing.

"Whose then is the Babylonian litter with trappings of scarlet and gold?" asked Clive, as the Ford rattled off. "You don't mean to say you fellows came in a thing like that?"

They denied it until seventy times seven. The grey torpedo was Sarle's. Kenna was of opinion that the owners of the crimson caravan must be Johannesburgers, and "dripping with it."

"Not Johannesburgers," disputed Clive, with a wry lip. "No; they're too exclusive for that."

Something must have gone very wrong indeed with the atmosphere for Clive to start sneering. In truth some jangling element unnatural to the sweet accord of Ho-la-lÉ-la had been introduced, and did not leave with the strangers.

They settled down to smoke in the studio, but there was more smoke about than tranquillity. Sarle seemed distrait. Belle HelÈne sometimes cast an uneasy glance at April, who, still very pale, sat by herself on the lounge. Only Clive and Kenna talked racily, but in jerks, of cattle, fruit-blight, mules, and white ants. But presently all subjects of conversation seemed to peter out, leaving a dark pool of silence to form between them in the room. Kenna it was who threw the stone disturbing those still waters.

"Has any one told you, Miss Connal, about the girl who committed suicide on the Clarendon Castle?"

For a full moment not a word was spoken. Sarle, staring, made a movement with his hand over his mat of hair. April's lids fell over her eyes as though afflicted by a deadly weariness. Clive changed her cigarette from one corner of her mouth to the other before answering briefly:

"Yes; I know all about it." Which seemed to astonish Kenna.

"Oh!" he exclaimed. "I wish I did!"

It was Sarle's turn to look astonished.

"Why, Kenna, I told you everything there was to know. Besides, it was in the papers."

"No, Kerry. You told me something . . . and the papers told me something. Everything can only be related by one person." Dramatically he fixed his glance upon that person. There was no mistaking the challenge. April found courage to return his glance, but her eyes looked like the eyes of a drowning girl. At the sight of them two people were moved to action. Belle HelÈne rose and slipped from the room. Sarle also rose, but it was to seat himself again by April's side on the lounge.

"I don't understand what all this is about," he said quietly, "but it seems a good time for you to know, Kenna, and you, Clive, that we"—he took April's hand in his—"are engaged, and going to be married as soon as possible."

Kenna looked at him with pity and tenderness.

"You had better let her speak, old man. It is time you were undeceived."

"Be careful, Kenna."

"My dear Kerry, do you suppose that it gives me any pleasure to cause you pain, or to distress this charming lady? Only my friendship for you——"

"I can dispense with it," Sarle curtly interrupted.

"Ah! That's the way when a woman steps in." Kenna's lips twisted in a bitter grin. Sarle turned to April.

"Diana . . ."

"That is the very crux of the matter," rapped out, Kenna. "She is not Diana."

"What in God's name——?" began Sarle.

"What I want to know," pursued Kenna sombrely, "is—why, if Diana Vernilands jumped overboard, does this girl go masquerading under her title?"

"Are you mad?" Sarle stared from one to the other. "Haven't you known her all your life? Did you not meet as old friends?"

Kenna shrugged. "I never set eyes on her until that day at the 'Mount Nelson.' She was a friend of yours and chose to call herself by the name of a friend of mine, and . . . I humoured her . . . and you. But the thing has gone too far. After inquiries among other passengers I have realized the truth—that it was Diana who . . ." A spasm of pain flickered across his melancholy eyes. Sarle, in grave wonder and hurt, turned to April.

"It is true," she cried bitterly, pierced to the heart by his look. "Diana is drowned. I am a masquerader." Even if she had been nothing to him he could not have remained unmoved by the desperate pleading of her eyes. But he happened to love her with the love that casts out fear, and distrust, and all misunderstanding.

"I am the real April Poole," she said, broken, but resolute that at least there should be no further mistake. He gave her one long look, then lifted her hand, and held it closer. The gesture was for all the world to see. But Kenna had not finished with her.

"You will allow a natural curiosity in me to demand why you should wear the name and retain the possessions of my friend Lady Diana Vernilands?" he asked, dangerously suave.

Then Clive sprang full-armed to the fray.

"And you will allow a natural curiosity in me to demand why you should harry my friend like this—browbeat her for a girlish folly entered into mutually by two girls and ending in tragedy through no fault of April's?" The painter's eyes burned with a blue fire bleak as her own mountain tops. It was as though Joan of Arc had come to the rescue and was sweeping the room with valiant sword. Even Kenna was partially intimidated.

"That is her story," he muttered.

"You fool, Ronald Kenna," she said gently. "Can't you look in her face and see there is no touch of treachery or darkness there? Thank God, Kerry is not so blind."

There was a deep silence. Then she said:

"Listen, then, to my story," and repeated the facts April had told her, but as April could never have told them, so profound was her understanding of the motives of the two girls in exchanging identities, so tender her treatment of the wayward Diana. Truly this "unfulfilled woman" was greater in the width and depth of her soul than many of those to whom life has given fulfilment of their dreams.

Daylight faded, and shadows stole through the open windows. In the large, low-ceiled room clustered with saddles and harness and exquisite pictures, everything grew dim, except their white faces, and the glistening of tears as they dripped from April's lids.

"I must ask to be forgiven," said Kenna very humbly, at last. "My only plea is that my friendship for Kerry blinded me. And . . ." he halted an instant before the confession of his trouble. "I once loved that little wayward girl."

So it was Diana Vernilands who had proved false and sent him into the wilds! Somehow that explained much to them all: much for forgiveness, but very much more for pity and sympathy.

Suddenly the peace of eventide was rudely shattered by the jarring clank of a motor being geared-up for starting. Evidently Ghostie's friends were departing in the same aloof spirit with which they had held apart all the afternoon. No one in the studio stirred to speed the parting guests. It did not seem fitting to obtrude upon the pride of the great. A woman's voice bade good-bye, and Ghostie was heard warning them of a large rock fifty yards up the lane. A man called good-night, and they were off.

"By Jove! I know that fellow's voice," puzzled Sarle. April thought she did too, but she was in a kind of happy trance where voices did not matter. The next episode was Ghostie at the studio window blotting out the evening skies.

"They have gone," she timidly announced.

"Ah! Joy go with them," remarked Clive, more in relief than regret.

"But there is still one of them in my room."

"What?"

"She has been waiting to speak to you all the afternoon; they all have, but they could not face the crowd."

"Pore fellers," said Clive, with cutting irony.

"The one in my room's—a girl," said Ghostie—"a friend of yours."

"She has strange ways," commented Clive glumly. "But ask her to come in. These also are my friends."

Ghostie disappeared. Simultaneously the two men arose; remarking that they must be going—they had stayed too late, and it was getting dark. Clive easily shut them up.

"Of course you can't go. Stay to supper and go back by the light of the moon. We've got to have some music and sit on the Counsel Rock, and eat—apricots and all sorts of things yet. And afterwards we'll come a bit of the way with you."

They did not need much persuasion to settle down again. Clive handed round smokes.

"We won't spoil the best hour of the day by lighting the lamp," she said. They waited. In a minute or so they heard the strange girl approaching. The house consisted of a number of rooms built in the form of a square round a little back courtyard. Each room led into the other, but had also an outer door. Ghostie's room was third from the studio, with one between, unused because of huge holes in the floor. It was through this dilapidated chamber that the girl could now be heard approaching, clicking her high heels and picking her way delicately by the aid of a candle whose beams showed under the door and flicked across the courtyard at the back. In spite of its light she caught one of her high heels in a hole, and a faint but distinctly naughty word was heard, followed by a giggle. As she reached the door she blew out the candle. They heard the puff of her breath, as plainly as they had heard the naughty word. Then she stood in the open doorway, visible only because she wore a white dress.

"Come in," said Clive with politeness, but irony not quite gone from her voice. The figure did not stir or speak. For some reason unknown to her, April felt the hair on her scalp stir as though a chill wind had blown through it. And the same wind sent a thrill down her backbone. Clive repeated the invitation, somewhat sharply, and then the girl spoke.

"I'm ashamed to come in."

The voice was timid, and very low, but it was enough to make April give a broken cry and hide her face in Sarle's shoulder. Kenna leapt to his feet, and next moment the yellow spurt of a lighted match in his hand revealed the drooping face of the girl in the doorway.

"My God! Diana!"

"Yes; isn't it awful!" she said mournfully. "I know I ought to be dead, but I'm not. How do you do, Ronny?"

She passed him and came slowly across the room to the girl who was trembling violently against Sarle's shoulder. The strain of the day, ending in this, was almost more than April Poole could bear.

"Don't be frightened, April." She was genuinely concerned. "It is really me and not my ghost. You see, I never jumped overboard at all, but simply hid in one of Geoffrey Bellew's big packing-cases. I really could not face those enraged beasts and Philistines any longer."

There was an amazed and gasping silence, but Diana in the middle of the limelight was in her element, and rapidly regained her spirits. She tripped to Clive and shook her warmly by the hand.

"So pleased to see you. I should have come out here long ago, but I got so knocked about in the packing-case that I had to go to bed and be nursed by Geoff's old aunt at Wynberg. Everything perfectly proper, so don't be alarmed. She chaperoned us out here this afternoon, you know, and would have liked to see you, but really it was rather awkward with Ronny and Major Sarle turning up immediately afterwards. We didn't expect to find April here either—naturally. That was a nasty bang in the eye. I begged Ghostie to hide me in her room, and we waited and waited, but these terrible men seem to have taken root here." She twinkled at them gaily, but no one appeared to have recovered sufficiently from shock to reciprocate her pert amusement.

"So at last, of course, I had to bundle them off and face the music alone. Especially as belle HelÈne told me there was some sort of trouble boiling up in here for poor April."

"I suppose you never realized that trouble has been boiling up for her ever since you disappeared?" said Clive.

"Oh, but of course; and I've been dreadfully sorry, and worrying myself to ribbons."

"It doesn't seem to have interfered with your health," was Clive's only rejoinder. "May one ask what you intended to do to put things straight?"

Diana had the grace to look slightly abashed—only slightly.

"There was nothing for it but to come out here to you and sit tight until the scandal had blown over, while April returned to England. Once she got on board she would have found a letter telling her it was all right, and that I was not dead at all."

"Very charming and considerate too!" commented Ronald Kenna acidly. "A few other people, including Sarle and myself, might have been dead in the meantime, but what would that have mattered?"

It was no use being acid with Diana, however. She was riotously pleased with herself, and bubbling over with pride in her cleverness, and joy in her escape from seclusion. Infection from her light-heartedness was almost impossible, and once the shock had passed, April easily forgave her the cruel and thoughtless part she had played, the hours of anguish she had given. Sarle and Kenna exchanged one grim glance, but it ended in a smile. The deep-rooted friendships of men do not hurry to such short and poor conclusions. Besides, Sarle had come that day to the attainment of his heart's desire, and was not inclined to fall out with either Fate or friends. As for Kenna, looking at the gilt-haired minx who held his heart-strings, he saw as in a vision that days of peaceful loneliness on the veld were passing, and the future held more uneasiness and folly than the mere month of April could cover. He would need all the friends he had to see him through.

[1] Basuto for "Far away over there."

*******

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