“Because you made that stupid promise?” she said. “That promise is nothing. What is such a promise to me now? If I had never made it I should still go.” He was looking down at her as he spoke. “Do not ask me to say anything more. There is nothing more to be said. Will you forget me in a month, do you think?” Was it possible that there was a touch of anxiety in the tone of his question? she thought for an instant. Then she looked into his face and laughed. “God bless you, Daireen!” he said tenderly, and there was sadness rather than passion in his voice. “God keep you, Daireen! May nothing but happiness ever come to you!” He held out his hand to her, and she laid her own trustfully in his. “Do not say good-bye,” she pleaded. “Think that it is only for a month--less than a month, it must be. You can surely be back in less than a month.” “I can,” he replied; “I can, and I will be back within a month, and then---- God keep you, Daireen, for ever!” He was holding her hand in his own with all gentleness. His face was bent down close to hers, but he did not kiss her face, only her hand. He crushed it to his lips, and then dropped it. She was blinded with her tears, so that she did not see him hasten away through the avenue of oaks. She did not even hear his horse's tread, nor could she know that he had not once turned round to give her a farewell look. It was some minutes before she seemed to realise that she was alone. She sprang to her feet and stood looking out over those deathly silent broad leaves, and those immense aloes, that seemed to be the plants in a picture of a strange region. She heard the laughter of the Hottentot women at the river, and the unmusical shriek of a bird in the distance. She clasped her hands over her head, looking wistfully through the foliage of the oaks, but she did not utter a word. He was gone, she knew now, for she felt a loneliness that overwhelmed every other feeling. She seemed to be in the middle of a bare and joyless land. The splendid shrubs that branched before her eyes seemed dead, and the silence of the warm scented air was a terror to her. He was gone, she knew, and there was nothing left for her but this loneliness. She went into her room in the cottage and seated herself upon her little sofa, hiding her face in her hands, and she felt it good to pray for him--for this man whom she had come to love, she knew not how. But she knew she loved him so that he was a part of her own life, and she felt that it would always be so. She could scarcely think what her life had been before she had seen him. How could she ever have fancied that she loved her father before this man had taught her what it was to love? Now she felt how dear beyond all thought her father was to her. It was not merely love for himself that she had learnt from Oswin Markham, it was the power of loving truly and perfectly that he had taught her.