"I hope you prod him," said Diana.
"Billy wouldn't let me," glancing affectionately at her husband. "There is only one Major Carew for him."
"Still, it might do him good. We prodded him last night, didn't we?" addressing Stanley. "We went right into his den, and gave him a good baiting, while we smoked his new Abdullah cigarettes," and she smiled gleefully at the remembrance of the stern soldier, in an astonishingly sociable mood for him, humorously parrying her chaff. "You know," she ran on, "he simply hated our coming. I almost wonder he didn't dig impassable trenches across the road, or fortify himself in the Acropolis Hill. Anyone might have thought we were the bears, and he the woman."
"I expect he was afraid of your charms," said Grenville smilingly. "We wilderness-dwellers have none of the townsmen's armour to withstand fair women."
"Well, growling and scowling are very fair substitutes," quoth Diana; "and, besides, he didn't even trouble to observe if we had charms. As far as he decently could he looked the other way altogether."
While she chatted on, delighting the missionary and his wife with her gaiety, Meryl sat in a low chair, and gazed through the doorway out over the smiling country, much as Carew usually did.
"It must be very wonderful," she said at last, aroused by a sympathetic question from Ailsa Grenville, "to live day after day with such a scene as that in one's doorway."
"Yes," Ailsa told her. "The wonder never grows less, nor the mystery, nor the beauty. Major Carew, when he is here, loves just to sit and look at it; and so do I."
Diana, with the two men, had strolled outside; and Ailsa and Meryl sat alone in the cool interior.
Meryl sat very still, with her hands lightly clasped on her knees, and her eyes always—always—to the lovely prospect that was like a mighty ocean in which the waves were blue, mystical kopjes; and over which the first clouds, that heralded the approach of the rainy season, shed entrancing lights and shadows. Ailsa sat a little behind, and her eyes roved back from the view that had grown into her being and become part of her life to the face of the young heiress. She noted at once its instinctive charm; the charm of a woman blessed with most of the traits that hold and bind men for ever. Strength was there without masterfulness; sweetness that would never cloy; a dreamy elusiveness that meant a closed book it would be a joy to study chapter by chapter; and some of the chapters would surprise with their lightness and mirth, while others would surprise with their depth of sympathetic understanding, and yet others would bewilder alluringly with their whimsical, irresistible uncertainty. She knew that society papers sometimes spoke of the well-known millionaire's daughter as beautiful, but to her it seemed the word was hardly the right one. Meryl's face had in it something too strong and too distinctive for actual beauty; and yet Ailsa thought of all the lovely women she had ever seen none were quite so attractive. And because she was a tender-hearted woman, the thought crossed her mind to wonder if perhaps, out of the dark shadow that she knew hung ever over Peter Carew's life, there might yet be a way of escape; a gracious healing, and a final joy. Could two such humans meet and not love? Could anything truly separate them if once the love were born?