Norah took a deep quick breath like a man about to dive.
'Archie,' she said, 'is it because of me?'
From his seat he looked up at her slim figure whose intensity seemed to quiver like a spear struck into the ground. He was, I saw, reluctant to speak.
Ntula's chickens came to his rescue with a sudden squawking and a beating of wings. Archie signed to Changalilo to untie their legs and to give the basket of meal to the carriers to divide among them.
Norah stood motionless, her short hair flambant in the slanting rays of the sun. She repeated the question that Archie had not answered. He looked round him as if seeking escape.
'Norah,' he said, 'what's the good of going into all this? It's done now.'
'Even so,' she said, her voice as calm as the evening light, 'even if it is, is it fair to either of us—to me,' she corrected, 'this silence?'
Archie reflected. You could always lever up Archie with the word 'unfair.'
I turned away with a feeling of intrusion. Yet Norah might need my support. I watched in the top branches of a tree a fishing eagle, sitting solid in the yellow sunlight. The big white bird with its square black head looked as if it had been chopped out of wood with rough, sure blows.
'No,' I heard Archie say almost casually, 'I do not want to go on living without you.'