"Well, women beat all! He treats her like a Patagonian; leaves her to drift with his child not yet born; rakes the hutches of the towns and the kraals of the veld for women--always women, black or white, it didn't matter; and yet, by gad, she wants him back!" She seemed to understand what was passing in his mind.

Rising, with a bitter laugh which he long remembered, she looked at him for a moment in silence, then she spoke, her voice shaking with scorn: "You think it is love for him that prompts me now ?" Her eyes blazed, but there was a contemptuous laugh at her lips, and she nervously pulled at the tails of her sable muff.

"You are wrong--absolutely.

I would rather bury myself in the mud of the Thames than let him touch me.

Oh, I know what his life must have been--the life of him that you know! With him it would either be the sewer or the sycamore-tree of Zaccheus; either the little upper chamber among the saints or eating husks with the swine.