And then, quite unexpectedly and silently, she appeared among them, and stood in the open window of the sitting-room, leaning her shoulder against the frame. She came so softly to the window, and took up her position there without remark, that Matheson realised her presence only through that extra sense which apprises one of the nearness of another person through the medium of a wordless transmission of thought. He turned his head abruptly, and found her behind him, and stood up. Their eyes met. In the dusk amid the shadows of the unlighted room behind her she suggested to his imagination, in her pale and slender beauty, a moon’s ray—the night seemed lighter for her coming.
“Please sit down again,” she said without moving.
“But I can’t sit while you stand,” he returned. “Come and take my chair.”
“Thank you; but if I wanted to sit I should bring a chair with me—there is one at my back. If you won’t sit down again you will oblige me to go in.”
He resumed his seat with a promptness which was a sufficient guarantee of his unwillingness to provoke her into acting as she proposed, and at the same time he moved it so that without turning he could see her where she stood. He rather liked to see her there so close to him in the dusk. It was immaterial whether she talked; to sit and watch her was so good in itself. But Honor did not remain silent long.
“What do you think of our Karroo nights?” she asked in her quiet, intense voice.
“You have put a difficult question,” he returned. “It is so impossible to express what one feels without seeming extravagant. A night like this is—just wonderful. There’s something... I can’t put it into words... it grips.”
She smiled suddenly and leaned forward looking into the night.
“I have a feeling when I stand here,” she said, “and look away across the veld into the deep purple and primrose of the evening sky, that I am gazing into the heart of Africa—a heart which opens and reveals many things. The past unfolds like a picture before the mind. I wonder if you will ever see into the heart of the veld? ... I wonder whether any Englishman could look so deep?”
“But surely,” he protested, “many Englishmen have loved this land?”