There are some friendships where the intercourse is only the seed which absence duly germinates. Jocelyn Gordon and Jack had parted as acquaintances; they met as friends. There is no explaining these things, for there is no gauging the depths of the human mind. There is no getting down to the little bond that lies at the bottom of the well—the bond of sympathy. There is no knowing what it is that prompts us to say, “This man, or this woman, of all the millions, shall be my friend.”
“I am sorry,” he said, “that he should have had a chance of causing you uneasiness again.”
Jocelyn remembered that all her life. She remembers still—and Africa has slipped away from her existence for ever. It is one of the mental photographs of her memory, standing out clear and strong amidst a host of minor recollections.
CHAPTER XVIII. A REQUEST
It surely was my profit had I known
It would have been my pleasure had I seen.
“Why did he come back?”
Jocelyn had risen as if to intimate that, if he cared to do so, they would sit in the verandah.
“Why did Mr. Durnovo come back?” she repeated; for Jack did not seem to have heard the question. He was drawing forward a cane chair with the leisurely debonnair grace that was his, and, before replying, he considered for a moment.
“To get quinine,” he answered.