"Yes," said Roger, moistening dry lips. "She was like light."
"What I noticed most about her," said Lionel, taking on now the tone of a colonial who has lived much away from the society of women, "was her fineness. She did things in a way no other woman could. When I came back from the East, and went to see her—of course I used to go to Portobe fairly often when Leslie was there—it was like being with some one from another world. She was so full of fun, too. She had a way of doing things simply. I'm not good at describing; but you know how some writers write a thing easily because they know it to the heart. Ottalie Fawcett seemed to do things simply, because she understood them to the heart, by intuition."
"Yes," said Roger. "I shall always be proud to have lived among a race which could bear such a person."
"She must be a dreadful loss," said Lionel, "to anybody who knew her well. I'm afraid you knew her well. I used to think of her when I was in Africa. She was wonderful."
"She was a wonderful spirit," Roger answered. "Tell me. I seem to know you very well, although I have hardly met you. I don't even know if your people are alive. Is your mother living?"
"No," said Lionel. "You're thinking of my old aunt who was at the At Home with me. I was stopping with her for a few days, before she left town. My people are dead."
"Are you thinking of going out again to Africa to examine sleeping sickness?"
"Yes," said Lionel. "I want to go soon. I want to go in the rains, so that I can test a native statement, that the rains aggravate the disease and tend to bring it out where it is latent. I believe it is all nonsense. Natives observe, but never deduce. Still, one ought to know."
"Would you go alone?"
"I should go out alone, I suppose. There are lots of men who would come with me to shoot lions, but trypanosomes are less popular. You don't bring back many trophies from trypanosomes, except a hanging jaw and injected eyes."