"You shame my idleness, Miss Krige," Matheson said. "I don't see why I should be told off to rest. I think I'll go and have a look at that well." Honor laughed. "You know you just long to sit in the shade and smoke," she said. And Freidja, who, like Andreas, disapproved of her sister's easy familiarity with the stranger, replied that she thought her brother would prefer to accompany him when he inspected the wells. "You see," he said, and turned in protest to Mrs Krige. "I am not allowed to do anything. Every one insists upon encouraging my natural indolence." He would have been very willing to sit in the garden had Honor consented to sit with him; but, breakfast over, Honor disappeared with her sister; and Mrs Krige, explaining that they had duties to attend to, offered to show him a pleasant corner in the shade of the trees, where he would feel as cool as it was possible to feel in such warm weather. She led the way into the garden. There were chairs under the trees, and a primitive wooden seat formed with roughly sawn logs, which served the double purpose of a seat and table. Beyond the garden were lucerne beds, and beyond these again was a fencing of wire confining a number of Krige's best birds. It was neither a restful nor a pretty garden; it was burnt up and sunbaked like the surrounding veld, save for one long bed below the stoep which was planted with flowers and carefully tended. Some one who loved flowers cared for these and watered them. "It is not pretty," Mrs Krige said. "We had a beautiful garden when we lived in the town. I miss it." "It would be difficult," he replied, "to make a beautiful garden with so poor a supply of water. But the trees are fine. Trees in this country are more acceptable than anything else." She looked about her with a vague discontent in her eyes, eyes which held at times, which held now, a haunting expression of sorrow. "Yes, trees are good," she agreed. "Do you observe that so far as the gaze can reach there is not one patch of shade except just here?--not a bush, only that small clump of prickly-pear yonder to throw its scant shadow on the ground? Sometimes there are mirage trees. One wonders..." She broke off without completing the sentence and seated herself in one of the chairs. "I want to talk to you," she said. "It is long since I met a fellow-countryman. I have become so identified with the Dutch that the few English friends I possessed have dropped away one by one. In this country a divided allegiance is impossible. I belong to my husband's people--my admiration and sympathies are all with them. You can't understand that," she added, with a swift look into his grave eyes. "I saw last night while Honor talked that you failed to understand. I believe it was your restraint then that decided me to attempt to explain what is to you incredible. You didn't understand; but I saw that you were trying to understand."