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Updated: June 7, 2025
"For God's sake wait a minute, Al'mah!" he urged, desperately. "What has upset you? What has happened? Before dinner you were yourself; now " he threw up his hands in despair "Ah, my dearest, my star " She turned upon him savagely, and it seemed as though a storm of passion would break upon him; but all at once she changed, came up close to him, and looked him steadily in the eyes.
While it was an invitation, it was also an engagement, on terms which would have been adequate for Patti in her best days. It would, if repeated a few times, reimburse Al'mah for the sums she had placed in Byng's hands at the time of the Raid, and also, later still, to buy the life of her husband from Oom Paul.
His eyes slowly closed, and he lay so motionless that Al'mah and Rudyard thought he had gone. He scarcely seemed to notice when Al'mah took the hand that Rudyard had held, and the latter, with quick, noiseless steps, left the room. What Rudyard had been watching and waiting for was come. Jasmine was at the door. His message had brought her in time.
If he goes without their meeting who can tell! Now is the time now. I want to see it. It must be." He reached out both hands and took hers, while she grew pale. Her eyes had a strange childishly frightened look. "You are a good woman, Al'mah," he said. A quivering, ironical laugh burst from her lips. Then, suddenly, her eyes were suffused.
Each turned quickly, and their eyes came back from regarding the things of the imagination, and saw each other face to face. The nurse gave an exclamation of pleasure and ran forward. Stafford held out a hand. It seemed to him, as he did it, that it stretched across a great black gulf and found another hand in the darkness beyond. "Al'mah!" he said, in a voice of protest as of companionship.
There was shade now, but there was not safety, for the ground was spurting dust where bullets struck, and even bodies of dead men were dishonoured by the insult of new wounds and mutilations. Al'mah thought nothing of safety, but only of this life which was ebbing away beside her.
A pity as deep as any feeling he had ever known had come to him as he stood with Al'mah beside the bed of her dead renegade man; and it seemed to him that they two also might well bury themselves in the desert together, and minister to each other's despair.
"They should know the truth," he said almost peremptorily. "They both know," she rejoined calmly. "I told him this evening. On the day I saw you at the hospital, I told her." There was silence for a moment, and then he said: "She must come here before he joins his regiment." "I saw her last night at the hospital," Al'mah answered. "She was better. She was preparing to go to Durban.
She looked Al'mah in the eyes with a look of reproof and command. "Never, never again speak of that to me or to any living soul," she said. "I will try to forget it; you must put it behind you." ... Suddenly she pointed to the other room where Al'mah's husband lay dead. "When is he to be buried?" she asked. "In an hour."
He had come at Jasmine's request to bring Al'mah, and he had overheard her last words. He saw that there had been a scene, and conceived that it was the kind of quarrel which could be better arranged by a third disinterested person. After a moment's hesitation, with an anxious yet hopeful look, Fellowes disappeared, Al'mah's brown eyes following him with dark inquisition.
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