At that moment Norah stepped into the sunlit clearing. Coming from under the close shadow of the forest, she was dazzled, the oblique rays of the sun shining in her face. Archie rose to meet her, amazed. How had she found him? What had brought her? What was her need of him?
Never free with words, wonder held him silent, conscious only of gladness that she was there. But gladness left him when recognition dawned in the shocked eyes she shaded from the sun. Not for him, they revealed, had she come.
Her arm raised against the sun went out, pushing something away, and her face as she looked down was bloodless. So she stood for a second, then up went her chin with the old defiant gesture.
'Why did you follow me?' she said, her deep voice damped down till he could hardly hear.
'Follow you?' he repeated.
'Didn't you understand what I wrote?' she asked.
The pause which followed was long, even for Archie's conversational methods. Speech was forced on her again.
'The letter I left you at the farm.'
'The farm? I've been in the Congo.'
'You don't know...?'