It seemed to Esmé as they walked rapidly along in the clear light air that nature revealed herself in her fairest mood that morning. Surely never had sunlight shone more golden, never had the blue of the sky appeared more intense, nor the veld glowed with such splendour of colour. A blue haze, liquid in the golden light, quivered before her vision like a thing alive with iridescent wings outspread in the untempered sunlight that poured itself out upon the earth with a brilliance hurtful to the eyes. Everywhere her gaze turned some fresh wonder met the view. Green mingled with brown and orange, shot with vivid colours, where the hardy veld flowers blossomed in the grass and among the piles of hot-looking yellow stones by the side of the road. It was a scene of wide and glowing colour, of immense blue distances lit by the fierce flame of the sun.
How much of her enjoyment was due to the beauty of the day, and how much to the companionship of the man who shared these things with her, she did not at the time pause to consider. Her senses were steeped in the delight which is born of the mysterious magic of beauty. Everywhere she looked she saw this magic pictured; in her heart she felt its influence; it permeated all her being, all her brain. And again the expectation of adventure gripped her. The belief that something was about to happen, something of tremendous personal importance, took hold of her imagination, stirred her deeply with a mingling of awe and joyous anticipation like nothing she had ever known before. Something was going to happen to her; something surely had happened to her already to work this change in her calm practical nature. For the first time in her quiet uneventful life her latent womanhood rose to the surface and found expression in a number of new emotions, emotions which she vaguely realised without understanding their significance.
She felt intensely alive. Her face was radiant with the joy of life. But she did not talk much. Hallam was not a talkative companion, and his silence affected her. Occasionally he paused to draw her attention to a particular spot; and once he called a halt and seated himself beside her in the shade of some bushes to rest. When he was seated he lit his pipe. He had brought apples with him, and he offered Esmé one, and a knife to peel it with. She returned the knife and set her teeth in the fruit and ate it with keen enjoyment.
“I get these from a farm in the neighbourhood,” he explained. “You should walk there one day. They grow quite good fruit, and they are always glad to see visitors. It’s not far from the hotel.”
“You appear to know every one around here,” she remarked.
“I have been here some months,” he replied.
“And you seek your friends outside the hotel?” she said.
“I neither seek nor find friends,” he answered bluntly. “I have some slight acquaintance with these people which they do not discourage because it is profitable to them. I do not understand disinterested friendship. I do not believe in it.”
“Which is to say you have never felt a disinterested friendship for any one,” she said. “You don’t know what you miss.”
“In that case, I miss nothing,” he replied. “One has to be conscious of a need in order to appreciate its absence. Life is a huge business of bluff. A few persons only remain sincere because they will not take the trouble to pose. To be sincere is to become unpopular. But unpopularity is less irksome than maintaining a pose of sociability. I believe there are very few people who honestly love their kind.”