"Then I would remain a widow for the rest of my days. I love my husband. I should always remain true to his memory. You could never be anything to me. Not until this moment have I ever been able to feel the faintest glimmer of respect for you."
"Even if that is so, I wonder that you choose to speak like that to me, situated as you are now. It is calculated to scatter the good intentions of a better man than I."
"I cannot help it. I have told you I am not in your power. I am not afraid to die. That I prove by not shooting you as you stand there. As it is! I keep these little bullets for myself."
Van Zwieten groaned. "To think of this woman being wasted on a worthless fool like Burton!" said he.
"He is not a fool."
"You may not think so. You cannot expect me to agree. Oh, if you had only listened to me, only given me a chance, I would have been a better man!"
"I think you are a better man, or you would not have behaved as you are doing now. You are a strange mixture of good and bad."
He shrugged his shoulders. "It often happens so," he said. "Those who think to find a bad man all bad or a good man all good are invariably disappointed. I have met the best of men, and hated them for their meanness, just as I have met the worst and loved them for some delightful incongruity. We are a pie-bald lot indeed."
Then again for a few moments they went on silently. In the distance now could be seen a light, and on the wind came the barking of dogs. The murmur of the river continued all the while like the drone of the bagpipes.
"You see, I have not deceived you," he said. "There is the farm. There are women there. The men are out with their commandoes--rebels, you call them. I suppose you wonder what I am doing here on this side of the Tugela?"