“Yes,” he agreed. “It cuts him, of course, badly. But he regrets this difference rather than condemns it. That’s where the wider understanding of race comes in: he discriminates between sedition and mistaken ideals.”
“And he has tutored you?” she said.
“He—and others.”
He looked away from her, aware of her searching scrutiny. Did she guess, he wondered, that Nel was somehow connected with the story of Honor? His sympathies with the Dutch, he felt, must wound her in a sense.
“I’ll tell you why he wants you to join Botha’s army,” she said, after a short pause; and Matheson was conscious that the fingers of the hand he held closed suddenly tighter about his own—“why you mean to do that rather than go to Europe—because you also understand... You’ve gone into this question, and you can regard it without prejudice. I wish I could do that.”
“Any one can,” he asserted. “It’s merely a matter of analysing motives.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I know that admittedly there are two sides to every question; but each side sees inevitably its own point of view; occasionally one may obtain an imperfect view of the other side; but it is given only to the largest vision to see both sides clearly. The wider vision lights the path to a more complete understanding. I wish I possessed it.”
“Are you so sure you don’t?” he asked, and took her chin between his fingers and turned her face towards his and held it for a while. “They see a long way, those wise brown eyes. Some one once tried to make me see into the heart of Africa... You penetrate deeper than that—you see into the heart of humanity; and there you have the key to everything.”
Matheson did not speak of the other change in his plans which the meeting with Nel had brought about Brenda still supposed he was going to Johannesburg; and he allowed her to think that. But he felt some embarrassment when she asked him to send her word of his arrival, and a telegram to let her know when to expect him back.
“If I miss writing on my arrival,” he said, and felt mean at the equivocation, “I’ll wire you news of my return. It will be such a hurried affair, I doubt whether there will be much time for writing—and none for receiving any reply from you. I’ll get back as soon as I can.”