Within the space of a few minutes Gideon sprang on a horse and galloped off in the direction of the homestead where the woman he loved lay dying. Marta sent one of the servants to fetch a span of oxen, and soon followed her husband, in a wagon.
When Gideon arrived at Marta’s homestead he could at once see that directions had been given as to the details of his reception. As he ascended the steep flight of steps which led to the voorkuis the door swayed open and revealed the weeping figure of Sara, his niece. Walking on tip-toe she beckoned to him to follow her, and led the way to an inner room, the door of which stood ajar. Gideon entered, every nerve in his body tingling with apprehension. Sara softly closed the door behind him, and then he heard her retreating footsteps upon the clay floor of the passage.
The dying woman lay propped up in bed, her cheeks flushed and her lips parted in a smile of loving welcome. She looked, for the moment, not more than twenty years of age. Her face carried Gideon back to the spring morning of long ago, when he met her for the first time, walking under the budding oaks of the Stellenbosch street. With a last, pathetic effort of coquetry, the poor remnant of her once-beautiful hair was spread over her shoulder. Her hand appeared for an instant from under the bed-clothes; it looked like the hand of a skeleton in a livid glove.
Gideon stood for a space looking into the smiling eyes of the woman whom he loved and sunning himself in their dying glow. The soiled years seemed to shrivel away like a burnt-up scroll, the past lived again in a borrowed glamour of lost joy that had never existed and his withered heart expanded like a rose in summer.
With a long-drawn sigh he sank to his knees at the side of the bed and pressed his lips hurriedly upon the tress of silky hair; then he drew hurriedly back, startled at his own temerity. Marta turned her head slightly until she could see his face. Her eyes became softer with the dew of happiness and a smile hovered upon her lips. Then she spoke:
“Listen—I am dying;—will you take my children and care for them?”
Gideon could not speak; he nodded his head and she proceeded:
“I only knew you loved me when it was too late... I waited for you to speak—then they said that you loved someone else—”
Gideon’s brain was busy recalling the long-past. Every obscure detail of the days of his brother’s courtship and his own bitter disappointment came back to him with strange distinctness. How had the misunderstanding arisen; who was to blame?—“Stephanus always hated you and I loved you all the time—Aletta need not know—I only tell you now that I am dying—”
Gideon tenderly took the wasted hand and laid it against his rugged cheek.