"What demon of revolt and impatience drove me out into the wilderness, when I ought to have followed her and refused to believe in her unkindness, and insisted upon being heard, and heard again, and rejected again, only to be accepted later? Did I not know, in my heart of hearts, that she loved me? And now she will believe no more in my love. The man who could leave her, who could try to cure himself of his passion for her--such a man is unworthy to be remembered. Some one else will appear upon the scene--that unknown rival whom no man fears or foresees till the hour sounds and he is there--some arrogant lover, utterly unlike Allan or me--who will not adore her as we have adored--who will approach her not as a slave, but as a master, who will win her in a month, in a week, with fierce swift wooing, startle and scare her into loving him, win her by a _coup de main_. That is the sort of thing that will happen. It is happening now, perhaps. While I am standing by these African waters, sick with longing for her. Is it night and moonlight in England, I wonder? Are she and her new lover walking in the old sleepy garden? No, it is winter there; they are sitting at the piano, perhaps, in the lamplight, her little hands moving about the keys--he listening and pretending to admire, knowing and caring no more about music than the coarsest of my Pagazis. Oh, it is maddening to think of how I am losing her! And I came here to cure myself of loving her. Cure! There is no cure for such a passion as mine. It grows with absence--it strengthens with time." And now the Masika, the dreaded rainy season began; the rain-sun burnt with a sickly oppressive heat; and over all nature there crept the deathlike silence that comes before a storm. No longer was heard the wail of the fish-eagle calling his mate, and the answering call from afar. No diver flitted, black, long, and lanky, over the waters. The big white and grey kingfisher had vanished from his perch upon the branches that overhang the lake. Even the ranæ in the sedges, noisiest of birds for the most part, were mute in anticipatory terror. Thick darkness brooded over the long line of hills on the further side of the lake; and from Ujiji nothing could be seen but a waste of livid waters touched here and there with patches of white. Then through that dreadful stillness rolled the long low muttering of the thunder, and lightning flashes, pale and sickly, pierced the overhanging pall of night-in-day--and then the tempest, in all its majesty of terror, the roar of winds and waters, the artillery of heaven pealing, crackling, rattling, booming from yonder fortress of unseen giants, the citadel of untrodden hills.