She never shattered his moods by so much as a word, yet she was frightened, for at such times he seemed to withdraw far beyond her into a strange mystical world of his own where she had no part. Once she awakened in the night to find him sitting by the side of the fire, awake, looking up at the dome of cobalt sky powdered with stars. She lay there for a long time watching him. He turned toward her, and she closed her eyes quickly, pretending to be asleep. The old terror seized her that he was escaping her in an unearthly fashion that left her powerless.
On the fourth day, at the crest of a low hill covered with thorn-trees, Philip halted the little train of bearers, and said to her, “That ought to be the lake and Megambo.” He pointed into the distance where the plain seemed to break up into a group of low hills covered with trees, and then far beyond to turn into the dark line of a real forest. At an immense distance, out of the heat, the mountains appeared like a mirage. She stared for a long time, and presently she saw that what at first she had believed to be only sky was in reality a vast lake. As she looked, it seemed in a way to come alive, to be striking the reflection of the sky from a surface made of metal. It was a dark, empty country, wild and faintly sinister in its stillness.
2
It was Swanson who saw them coming and went out to meet them on the edge of the forest. He had heard the news from a black runner on his way up the lake to join a party of German engineers who were bound inland. He was so changed that Philip looked at him for a moment with the air of a stranger. He was much thinner and had lost most of his hair. As if to compensate the loss, he had grown an immense sandy beard, which gave him the air of a comic monk. But the slow, china-blue eyes were the same, and the way of talking slowly, as if he were always afraid that his tongue would run faster than his dull brain.
Philip said, “This is my wife,” and the shadow of Naomi suddenly fell on the three of them. “You got my letter?”
Poor Swanson had turned crimson, and stood awkwardly, holding his battered straw hat in his sausage-like hands. “No,” he stammered. “No—what letter?”
For a moment there was a terrible silence. They both saw that he had expected Naomi. He had thought all the while that the woman he saw from afar off with the train of bearers that wound along the river was Naomi ... coming back. And it was true. She had come back. She had returned in the strangest way to take possession of them all. She was there in the stupid, puzzled eyes of Swanson, in the confusion of Mary, in the tragic silence of Philip.
It was Philip who spoke suddenly. “Naomi is dead!” And Mary thought bitterly, “She isn’t dead! She isn’t dead! This place belongs to her. This strange man wishes that I were Naomi.”
“We’ve missed you,” said Swanson dully.
“I’ll tell you about it ... later, when we’re settled. Let’s be moving on now.”