For so both of them knew it to be. Though they had seen each other but once before, their love was so great, the bond between their natures so perfect and complete, that this outward expression of it would not be denied. Here was a mighty truth which burst through all wrappings of convention and proclaimed itself in its pure strength and beauty. That kiss of theirs was the declaration of an existent unity which circumstances did not create, nor their will control, and thus they confessed it to each other. “How long?” she asked, looking up at him. “Eight years to-day,” he answered, “since I rode away after those waggons.” “Eight years,” she repeated, “and no word from you all that time. You have behaved badly to me, Richard.” “No, no, I could not find out. I wrote three times, but always the letters were returned, except one that went to the wrong people, who were angry about it. Then two years ago, I heard that your father and mother had been in Natal, but had gone to England, and that you were dead. Yes, a man told me that you were dead,” he added with a gulp. “I suppose he was speaking of somebody else, as he could not remember whether the name was Dove or Cove, or perhaps he was just lying. At any rate, I did not believe, him. I always felt that you were alive.” “Why did you not come to see, Richard?” “Why? Because it was impossible. For years my father was an invalid, paralysed; and I was his only child, and could not leave him.” She looked a question at him. “Yes,” he answered with a nod, “dead, ten months ago, and for a few weeks I had to remain to arrange about the property, of which he left a good deal, for we did well of late years. Just then I heard a rumour of an English missionary and his wife and daughter who were said to be living somewhere beyond the boundaries of Natal, in a savage place on the Transvaal side of the Drakensberg, and as some Boers I knew were trekking into that country I came with them on the chance—a pretty poor one, as the story was vague enough.” “You came—you came to seek the girl, Rachel Dove?” “Of course. Otherwise why should I have left my farms down in the Cape to risk my neck among these savages?” “And then,” went on Rachel, “you or somebody else sent in the spy, Quabi, who returned to the Boer camp with his story about the Inkosazana-y-Zoola. You remember you brought him in limping to that old fellow with a grey beard and a large pipe, and the others who laughed at the tale. I mean when you said that this Inkosazana seemed very like an English maid, ‘the daughter of a teacher,’ whom you were looking for, and that you would go to find out the truth of the business.” “Yes, that’s all right; but Rachel,” he added with a start, “how do you know anything about it—Oom Piet and the rest, and the words I used? Your spies must be very good and quick, for you can’t have seen Quabi.”