The sun was dipping to the serrated sky-line, bathing the granite-piles in a lurid flush. The light had gone off the wide hollow beneath, leaving its broken-up stormy billows cold and grey, and the hush of evening was in the air. Then a sound fell upon her ear, the sound as of a stone dislodged by a light footfall. Her pulse beat quicker. It was her companion returning at last.
But the glad smile, which she had prepared to welcome him faded from her lips, and her face grew pale. Down yonder, on the fringe of the acacia growth, a figure was standing; but it was not his.
Had the savage enemy found them out at last? Nidia’s heart-strings tightened and her blood froze. A further glance served to reassure her, but only partially. The figure was not that of a native, of a savage. But—was it human?
It had vanished—silently, imperceptibly; had vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, but in that brief moment she had taken in every detail. The figure was that of a European, clad in brown, weather-beaten garments, tall, and wearing a long white beard. But the face. She had seen it for that moment, turned towards the setting sun, the light full upon it—full in the eyes—and never before had she beheld so awful an expression of fiendish hate stamped upon the human countenance. Was it human? The face was that of a devil! Nidia felt her flesh creep, and her hair rise, as she called to mind its expression, and all sorts of weird ideas, begotten of solitude amid vastness, circled through her brain. Was this frowning wilderness truly a demon-haunted spot, or had she seen the spectre of one of her murdered countrymen, who could not rest in his blood-stained grave? But that it could be a human figure she felt it impossible to believe.
Then another idea struck her. Was it indeed human—one who had escaped, like themselves, only to discover, or perhaps to witness the slaughter of those dear to him, whose brain had been turned thereby, and who, in a state of maniacal fury, was wandering at large? This solution, however, was hardly more palatable than the first. Had it seen her? She thought not; for she had remained perfectly still, true to an oft repeated injunction of her companion’s, as to the fatal attraction exercised towards oneself by any sudden movement, however slight. The sun had sunk altogether now, and already the very brief twilight was descending upon the surrounding waste. Would he never return? Nidia’s heart was well-nigh bursting with mingled terror and anxiety. Then it leapt for joy. A low whistle, a bar or two of a favourite song, a home-coming signal agreed upon between them, was borne to her ears. She could have laughed aloud in her delight. She composed both her face and manner to hide from him her terrors, for she had been careful never to let him suspect the half of what she went through during these protracted absences. Then his figure appeared striding out from the darkness.
“I’ve been in luck to-day, Miss Commerell!” he exclaimed gaily, flinging down a brace of full grown guinea-fowl, “Got them both at one throw, too.”
Nidia did not for a moment reply. She was looking up at him with a very soft and entrancing flush upon her face, and a light in her wide-opened eyes which he never quite remembered ever having seen there before. Then she said slowly, and with the air of one repeating a lesson—
“We have been through a good deal together during the last four days, including one of the narrowest shaves for our lives we can ever possibly again experience, and Heaven knows how long we are destined to roam the wilds together; but why not keep the conventional until our return to conventionality? Have I got a good memory, John?”
“Excellent,” he answered. “I must try to imitate it.”
His tone was even; but Nidia was not deceived. She was as well aware as he of the thrill that went through his heart on hearing his own words so exactly repeated, and all that they involved, and being so, she admired his self-restraint, and appreciated it in proportion to its rarity. If he had begun “to hang out the signals” at one time, he was careful to avoid doing so now. Yet—she knew.