Diana put her head on one side, like a small, bright-eyed bird. "We can see those in the Zoo, beloved."
"Well, and you can see Norway on a cinematograph."
Diana turned away with a low laugh.
"Clean bowled. Good for you, O wise Hypatia! Well, we'll go to this heathen land and be horribly uncomfortable for a time, and then we'll come back and make things hum in London as they never hummed before. Where is Jeanne, I wonder? If I've got to do my own hair for two solid months I'll never touch a wisp of it until we go," and she rang the bell peremptorily.
Later, for a few moments, Meryl again stood out on the balcony, enjoying the June night, and as she looked at the stars she smiled softly. She was going back to Africa, after all—her Africa, and perhaps Life would give her something big to do yet.
And half unconsciously, though with a sense of pleasurable possession, she stood with her eyes to the south.
And away in a distant land, on a high hill, strewn with ruins of an ancient, mysterious race, a man stood with his eyes to the north.
A taciturn, difficult, unaccountable man, who baffled the people that would fain be friendly with him, and chilled any who showed him warmth, and yet was invariably liked and trusted by all who had the perspicacity to see beyond the rigid exterior.
Even to-day, though he was mourning his sovereign, he had shown no softening of grief to those who beheld him. Rather, if anything, he had been more silent, more taciturn, more aloof than ever.
Yet the enfolding night and the quiet stars saw what none others saw. They saw the ache in the steady eyes, the compression as of pain on the resolute lips, the swift, unusual hunger, sternly suppressed, for something that had once been in some old life and was now for ever ended.