And then for once the man's armour failed him. "No, I am not going back to-night, and I am not in any special hurry. If you were going on to the top of the kopje, may I come with you?"
XVII
AN EVENING CONVERSATION
As they climbed slowly up the zigzag path, neither of them troubled to make conversation. All in a moment it had come back—mysteriously, unaccountably—the sense of understanding, the quiet kinship of minds—for her, the sudden utter content at his nearness. While he was there beside her, by his own seeking, what did the future matter?—the future might wait. It is generally so with women. In the "afterwards," the deepest pain is usually theirs, because it is not given them to break away and drown the ache and the longing in action and change; but in the present, if he, the loved, is with her, she can forget so much in that blessed sense of nearness. The man's ache, perhaps, spreads more uniformly over both presence and absence, for in each, for him, there is the very human craving to possess.
So they reached the summit, and stood a moment gazing at the prospect outspread. A sunset in a novel has become too banal for repetition; it seems, indeed, almost the last word in literary mediocrity; and yet at the evening hour in Rhodesia, in September, when the rains are nearly due, and great masses of cloud begin to gather on the horizon, there is again and again a pageant of wonder and colouring to steep man's senses afresh at every renewal, as if it was the first time of beholding. Nothing banal, nothing mediocre in the actual phenomenon—just a riot of colouring, a riot of splendour, a riot of revelation. It is not a glory in the west spreading a little way overhead. It is an all around, north, south, east, and west, colouring beyond all telling—something aloof, overpowering, incomprehensible, with the remote majestic splendour of the Rockies, or the Sahara, or the Victoria Falls.
Neither Carew nor Meryl spoke. They were of those who know that the highest appreciation of all is in silence. But to herself Meryl whispered:
"Lord, Thy glory fills the heavens."
At last he turned and glanced at the little book in her hand.
"You read Omar?"