She laughed and understood him to a nicety. They slipped off into light easy talk as though they had known one another all their lives, and there was neither that narrow escape from tragedy behind them, nor Africa and possible tragedy ahead. The girl was good comrade. The man was hardly that. He too frankly devoured her with his eyes. And certainly, in her cool, frilled muslin dress, and her big green sun hat she was pretty enough to paint. Her hair was black assuredly, but her pale olive face was moulded in curves of the most delicious. In England, and as an Englishwoman, she would have been dark perhaps, though not noticeably so. Nine hundred and ninety-nine English people out of the thousand would have commented on her beauty only. In America--well, in America, she would at once have been placed in that class apart. But Carter, the recently imported Englishman, saw nothing save only her beauty and her charm, and he behaved towards her as the English gentleman behaves towards his equal. A man who had been longer in Africa would have had the wisdom of one who had lived in the Southern States, and have picked out the African blood at a glance, and, as is the way of men who have eaten of the tree of that wisdom, would have ordered his civilities accordingly. CHAPTER III THE KING WHO STOPPED THE ROADS Mr. Smith was unsteady neither of speech nor foot, but an expert could have diagnosed that he had been dining. The expert, however, unless he had acquired his expertness near Malla-Nulla factory, would hardly have guessed that Mr. Smith was the better (or worse) for at least half a case of German champagne, generously laced with Angostura bitters. He limped into Carter's bedroom, put his lamp down on the table, sat on the chair beside the mosquito bar, and very carefully eased up the knees of his shrunk pyjamas. "I say, Mr. Assistant, wake up." Carter woke, and blinked at the glare of Mr. Smith's eyeglass. "Don't get up, please. I apologize for waking you, my dear follow, but since you turned in, you've been made a pawn in the great game of diplomacy. The fate of empires trembles on your nod." Carter roused up onto his elbow. "Don't you think the empires would tremble no more if we left them over till to-morrow morning?" "It would be most undiplomatic to leave them trembling too long. I can tell you I have had a devilish hard time of it putting his Majesty to sleep. He can carry his liquor like a man, and he'd a most royal way of seeing I drank level with him. But he may wake up any minute. Put not your trust in the sleep of kings, Mr. Carter." "All right, sir. I'll make a note of that. I'll brew the gasolene, and when the King wakes I'll stand by with soda-water and fusel oil, which I should think will heal the breach between us."