"He is going to eat with me," said Christian, with eyes that evaded hers.
"Yes," she said dully.
"And you go to bed," he urged, with an effort to seem natural. "You—you're too sleepy; you go to bed now. I 'll be up soon."
"But, Christian," she protested, while she wrestled with the need for slumber that possessed her; "I got to speak to you. There—there 's something I want to say to you first about—about—"
"No." His hand rested on her shoulder. "It's all right. There 's nothing to say; I don't want to hear anything. It 's all right now; you go on up to bed."
She rose obediently, but with an effort, and her hands moved blindly in front of her as she made for the door, as though she feared to fall.
"Good night, Christian," she quavered. "You 're awful good. An' good night, you"—to the Kafir. "You been a white man to me."
"Good night," replied Kamis, and made way for her carefully.
The queer little scene was sufficiently clear to him. He understood it entirely. The Boer, face to face with an emergency for which his experience and his training prescribed no treatment, could stoop to sit at meat with a Kafir, but he could not suffer his wife to share that descent. The white woman must be preserved at any cost in her aloofness, her sanctity, none the less strong for being artificial, from contact and communion with a black man. Better anything than that.
"Sit down," bade Christian. "Take one of those cups, and I will bring you coffee."