“Oh, the world!” Pamela pressed closer to him. “We are out of the world, dear, just for this journey. We have left it behind... we’re away from it all—alone—you and I. We are going to have this time together,—a glimpse of Heaven to brighten the drab world when we get back to earth. I want to make the most of it—of every minute. I don’t want to sleep away the hours, as I did this afternoon. It wasn’t kind of you to send me to sleep. Afterwards, when we are back in the world, then I’ll sleep, but not now. To-night I shall sit up quite late. I shall keep you with me. We’ll watch the night close down upon the veld, and look out upon the moving darkness together, and forget the world entirely and all this weary business of life... My dear! ... Oh, my dear!”
He bent his head lower until their lips met.
The long hot day drew to its close, and the brief twilight descended. They dined as they had lunched at the little table together. There were very few passengers on the train; the seats in the dining-car, save for one or two, were unoccupied. This was due to the season. It was a satisfaction to Dare, as it insured their greater privacy. He had secured their compartments at the end of the corridor so that they should not be disturbed with people passing; each detail had been carefully considered and carried out, and everything that experience had taught him as necessary to the comfort of a long train journey in the hot weather had been provided. Pamela lacked nothing which forethought could devise. Fruit there was in abundance, and cooling drinks suspended from the carriage window in Dare’s canvas water-bag. The dry air of the Karroo induces thirst. Pamela, who had come away entirely unprovided, was grateful to him for his thought for her.
“You are a wonderful person; you’ve forgotten nothing,” she said.
“I am an old hand,” he replied. “I do not travel with a beautiful trust in Providence, and a blind faith in the commissariat of the railway, like this other wonderful person. To-morrow and the next day you will know what thirst means.”
“I think we shall be able to satisfy it,” she said, regarding the hamper of fruit on the opposite seat. “It’s like a huge picnic, isn’t it? I feel—excited.”
He laughed, and passed an arm about her, holding her comfortably against his shoulder. She rested so for a while quietly.
“I have drunk of the waters of Lethe,” she said, looking up at him after a silence. “I am like a woman whose memory has gone. Everything is a blank, save the present. It’s good, isn’t it?”
“It’s more than good,” he replied.
He gazed down into the sweet face resting against his shoulder, and smiled into the deep, serious eyes.