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Three millions then and how much more now? and big houses, and no children. It was an empty business, or so it seemed to him, who had come of a large and agreeably quarrelsome and clever family, with whom life had been checkered but never dull. He took up his hat and stick, and went towards the door. His eyes caught Al'mah's photograph as he passed.
She came a step nearer, and peered into Al'mah's face, as though to read her inmost mind, as though to see if what she said was really true. She saw not a quiver of agitation, not the faintest horror of memory; only the reflective look of accomplished purpose. "You are you insane?" Jasmine exclaimed in a whisper. "Do you know what you have said?" Al'mah smoothed her apron softly. "Perfectly.
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.
It was rather contradictory and unreasonable, however, to hear this big, shy, rugged fellow taking exception, however delicately and by inference only, to the lack of high refinement, to the want of fine fleur, in Al'mah's personality.
As the singing-woman's hands lay in hers, a flush slowly spread over Al'mah's face, and behind the direct power of her eyes there came a light which made them aglow with understanding. "I always thought you selfish almost meanly selfish," Al'mah said presently.
With the flight of Krool and the gun came the end of Al'mah's vigil. The troop of cavalry which galloped out to her was followed by the Red Cross wagons. At dawn, when the veld breathes odours of a kind pungency and fragrance, which only those know who have made it their bed and friend, the end came to the man who had lain under the gun.
The surgeon stayed his course at three-quarters of the distance to care for a gunner whose mutilations were robbed of half their horror by a courage and a humour which brought quick tears to Al'mah's eyes.
They two derelicts of life had much in common the communion of sinners who had been so much sinned against. "I heard his last words about you and her," she said in a low voice. "Where is Byng?" he asked anxiously. "In the kloof near by. He will be back presently." "Thank God!" Al'mah's face was anxious. "I don't know what you are going to say to him, or why you have come," she said, "but "
"Well, it was a boudoir." He blushed a little in spite of himself. "Ah!... Al'mah's? Well, she owed you a breakfast, at least, didn't she?" "Not so good a breakfast as I got." "That is putting rather a low price on her life," she rejoined; and a little smile of triumph gathered at her pink lips; lips a little like those Nelson loved not wisely yet not too well, if love is worth while at all.
There is no more impressive and revealing moment with man or woman than when you stand in a room empty of their actual presence, but having, in every inch of it, the pervasive influences of the absent personality. A strange, almost solemn quietness stole over Al'mah's senses. She had been admitted to the inner court, not of the man's house, but of his life.
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