"I should find you anyhow," he assured her confidently.
Mrs. du Preez, also, had to be taken leave of, and shed a tear or so at the last. In her, a strong emotion found a safety valve in ferocity.
"As for that Jakes woman," she said, in conclusion, "you tell her from me, Miss Harding—from me, mind,—that it wouldn't cost me any pain to hand her a slap acrost the mug."
Margaret went homeward through the late light dreamily. Far away, blurred by the sun's horizontal rays, the figure of the trooper occupied the empty distance, no larger than an ant against the flushed sky. Peace and melancholy were in the mood of the hour, a cue to lead her thoughts towards sadness. It caused her to realize that she would not leave it all without a sense of loss. She would miss its immensity, its effect of setting one at large on an earth without trimmings under a heaven without clouds, to make the most of one's own humanity. It would be a thing she had known in part, but which henceforth she would never know even as she herself was known. She could never now find the word that expressed its wonder and its appeal.
Mr. Samson was on the stoep as she went up the steps to enter the Sanatorium. He put down his paper and toddled forward to open the door for her, anxiously punctilious.
"Ford was down for tea," he said. "Askin' for you, he was."
"Oh, was he?" replied Margaret inanely, and went in.
At supper that evening in the farmhouse kitchen, Christian du Preez, glancing up from the food which occupied him, observed by a certain frowning deliberation on Paul's face, that his son was about to deliver himself in speech.
"Well, what is it, Paul?" he inquired encouragingly.
Paul looked up with a faint surprise at having his purpose thus forecasted.