“No, I do not know everything,” he said at last, “for I did not know that the whole world could contain one like you.”
Her fingers, intertwined with his, closed upon them in unspoken response. Both seemed to lack heart to revert to more serious and mundane talk in the happiness of the hour; and in God’s name, why should they, seeing that such hours can come to few, and then but seldom in a lifetime?
“Baas. Myn lieve Baas?”
“What do you want, old Sanna?” said Wyvern, frowning at the interruption, yet not moving. “Go away. You are disturbing us.”
“But myn Baas,” persisted the old woman, deprecatorily. “I think something must be dead—there—down by the river. The aasvogels are like a very cloud.”
“I don’t care if something is dead,” he answered. “I don’t care if all the world were dead—in fact I wish it was. So go away and don’t come bothering me again until I call you.”
She obeyed, not in the least huffy. Romance appeals to all natures and nationalities and ages, and even this semi-civilised old scion of a very inferior race was not impervious to a sympathetic heart-warming over the situation.
“Let’s go and see what she means, dearest,” said Lalanté after the old woman had gone. “I feel as if I should like to move a little, and—are we not still together?”
They went round to the angle of the house, whence they could see to the point indicated. The great scavengers of the air were wheeling and circling in hundreds, away down by the river bank, white and fleecy against the cloudless blue.
“They must have found that wretched Kafir,” said the girl. “Isn’t that somewhere about where he’d be lying?”