So the quiet evenings were spent by the mother in reading and writing, while the daughter gave herself up to the indulgence of her one great passion, music. Scales and exercises, Schubert and Chopin, and invariably at the end--before retiring for the night--Beethoven, the Master, the King of Music. CHAPTER XI PRISONER OF WAR How the routine of life at Harmony was broken in upon by news "from the front" that April month in 1901, I shall endeavour to relate. Hansie coming home one morning from a shopping expedition, found her mother in a state of suppressed excitement. Everything was as much as possible "suppressed" in those days--goodness only knows why, for surely it would have been better for the nervous and highly strung mind if an occasional outburst could have been permitted. Hansie suffered from the same complaint, and had to pay most dearly in after years for the suppression of her deepest feelings. There is a Dutch saying which forcibly expresses that condition of tense self-control under circumstances of a particularly trying nature. We say we are "living on our nerves," and that describes the case better than anything I have ever heard. Our heroines, like so many other sorely tried women in South Africa, were "living on their nerves," those wise, understanding nerves, so knowing and so delicate, which form the stronghold of the human frame. The external symptoms of this state were only known by those who lived in close and constant intercourse with one another. Hansie therefore knew, by an inflection in her mother's voice, that something out of the way had happened when she said: "I have had a note from General Maxwell." "Indeed! What does he say?" "He writes that Dietlof has been made a prisoner, and he encloses a telegram from the Assistant Provost-Marshal at Ventersdorp, in the name of General Babington, to say that Dietlof is well, as was Fritz when last seen. See for yourself." Hansie grabbed--yes, grabbed--the papers from her mother's outstretched hand. "'When last seen?' Mother, what can that mean? Why have the boys been separated?" "That is what I should like to know," her mother answered. "I wonder how we can find out. We must ask to see General Maxwell at once." That afternoon the two women called at the Government Buildings and were shown into the Governor's office. He seemed to be expecting a visit from them, and Mrs. van Warmelo apologised for troubling him, reminding him of the promise he had made on the occasion of their very first visit to him, that he would help them if they came to him in any trouble. This he remembered perfectly. "What is it you want me to do?" he asked. "If you will be so good, we want a permit to visit our prisoner in the Johannesburg Fort, where he will probably be kept until he is sent to Ceylon or where-ever he may have to go."