“I am boring you, I’m afraid—” he broke off.
“No, indeed. I am very much interested. What a hole and corner sort of life mine must seem to you!”
“Do you know you are a very great puzzle to me?”—he had nearly said “Verna.”
“Yes. Why?”
“You might have been everywhere, seen everything, from the way in which you talk. How on earth did you pick it up?—and you say you have never been outside Natal, except to the Rand.”
“Well, it’s true,” she answered, looking pleased. “I accept your verdict—as another compliment—and feel only proud.”
The constraint was broken down between them now, and they talked on and freely. There was that in the fact of her companion having told her so much about his life that wonderfully fascinated Verna. What was there about her that this strong, capable man of the world should take her into his confidence, especially on such short acquaintance? More and more she felt drawn towards him. How strange it must have been, she was thinking, before this new companionship had come into her life! And yet it was barely more than a week old.
And Denham? As he sat there chatting easily, the rings of blue smoke floating off lazily upon the still air, he too was thinking—and thinking pretty much the same thing. Again this new experience had come to him just at the right time. There was nothing to mar his enjoyment of it. A very short while earlier—well—there might have been. But not now. Yet while they talked he was studying his companion keenly. There was no posing, no little coquettish touches. She was perfectly natural.
“What a splendid thing it is to feel quite easy in one’s mind!” he went on, in pursuance of the subject of having, as he said, “buried” himself. “I can afford to feel that way just now, and it’s real luxury. I haven’t always been able to, no, not by any means.”
He broke off suddenly, then, as though moved by some strange impulse, went on—