He shouted for Matao. The singing ceased, while he ran to receive his orders. His return was signalled by a fresh outburst of the tune. Norah wished for a moment she had let Archie go. The start was intolerable. To gain time she asked how he had got his fever. He told her it was fording a river one day after elephant. She expressed her surprise. This was the first she had heard of elephant hunting.
He told her the size of his bag and the weight of the ivory. 'Not that it matters now,' he added, in spite of himself.
'D'you know, Archie,' she said, 'you never told me a word?'
He stared at her in silence. 'Nor I did,' he answered at last. 'But that was half the reason I went to the Congo.'
'And the other, the pure-bred bull,' she said sadly.
'Bull?' he was obviously puzzled, 'what bull?'
A measure of their old familiarity returned to her. 'Archie,' she said, 'you're maddening. Do you realise I haven't a notion what you've been doing from the day you left the farm till ... till we met here?'
So Archie struggled with his taciturnity and, helped out by Norah's questions, produced a more or less coherent story.
Until Norah's outburst on that momentous evening at the farm, no intuition had warned him she hated the life they were living. Intuition, introspection, and so forth don't get the same scope with a pioneer working eleven hours a day on a ranch, as they do with a serious young man fulfilling himself in Chelsea. Archie's only excuse took the form of a tribute to Norah.
'You stuck it like a brick,' he said. 'You never gave a sign.'