Then he ended, "You are trying to make me believe the impossible." I did not allow him, however, to ruffle me, as evidently was his desire, but replied that when one came to know better those whom one had only met occasionally, without ever having talked with them seriously, it was natural to amend one's opinion accordingly.

I told him, too, that my earlier misapprehension had been intensified by a certain lady who posed as Rhodes' greatest friend, and who had been loud in her denunciations of the High Commissioner, long before I had ever met him.

But now, I added, I had come to the conclusion that Sir Alfred had been terribly maligned.
At this point Rhodes interrupted me with the remark: "So you think that he is a paragon.

Well, I won't contradict you, and, besides, you know that I have always defended him; but still, with all his virtues, he has not yet found out what he ought to do with me." "What can one do with you, Mr.Rhodes ?" I asked with a smile.
"Leave me alone," was the characteristic reply, in a tone which was sufficient for me to follow the advice, as it meant that the man was getting restive and might at any moment break out into one of those fits of rage which he so often used as a means to bring to an end a conversation in which he felt that he might not come out as victor.
A few days later a rabid Rhodesian who happened to be staying at Groote Schuur approached me.

"You have been trying to convert Mr.Rhodes to Sir Alfred," he remarked.
"I have done nothing of the kind," I said.