'It isn't melodrama, it's tragedy! Norah, come away with me, Norah....'
Just then the duck came over, and winging swiftly against the sunset, interrupted Dick's eloquence.
On the third evening Dick, progressing from words to action, forced her to decision. The sun had set and Norah was still sitting out of doors protected from wild beasts by a lamp on the table and by a gun at her feet. The lowing of the cattle had abated and the thud of their feet as they shouldered into the kraals had ceased. The air was heavy with spring and with the fleshy scent of the wild magnolias that overhung the river.
She knew it was time to go indoors, but any effort seemed intolerable. The harsh chorus of frogs in the marshes alone broke the silence. She sat on. A moth, as big as a swallow, brushed against her cheek, causing her to look up. A yellow light across the river caught her eye. 'Dick's camp fire,' she thought, and let her imagination play. But as she gazed she knew she was mistaken, for the light was dodging and swaying nearer. It was a hurricane lamp crossing the river. It could only be carried by Dick, and he was coming over to her.
She did not feel glad or sorry, but waited in inert prostration before an oncoming fate. The night denied motion, and she was held in a snare waiting the coming of the fowler. Her heart began to beat faster. A drum started to throb in a distant village and her blood seemed to pulse in time. Dick's lamp was an intolerable way off, so were the tropical stars, so was reality. Her world was that insistent drum and her galloping pulses.
At last she heard Dick's footsteps on the leaves. Without a word he lowered himself into the chair beside her and for a long time sat in silence, his face in the shadow.
'What holds you here?' he asked at last.
'Say "who" rather?' her deep voice replied, resenting the effort of speech.
'The flowers blossom and die in your forests,' he went on, 'and no man sees them.'
'Poetry!' she laughed. 'This is prose and daily bread.'