He sat forward with his hands between his knees, and gazed very intently into her face--an earnest, pleasant face with patient eyes. "No; I don't understand," he said. "It's puzzled me a lot. You see, your daughter disclaimed your nationality, and you offered no protest. That's un-English. You can't change your nationality at will; it's as much a part of yourself as the colour of your eyes. We are proud as a race of our nationality. We are the finest nation in the world. I'm not for giving preference to any other. I don't say I'd talk like that to a foreigner--unless he challenged me; and then," he smiled slightly, "I'd probably be emphatic." Mrs Krige caught something of his humour, and smiled in sympathy. Deep down in her heart, so jealously hidden that she almost doubted its existence there, the undying love for her own people kept its place in spite of the sadness and injustice her life had known. "I felt as you do at one time," she said--"oh! for long after I was married. My husband was a Free State Boer--one of the old type, a little narrow and prejudiced, but a good man--an excellent husband and father. My married life was very happy." She folded her hands on her lap and turned aside her face and looked away with reminiscent gaze over the sunlit landscape. Possibly she saw anew those long dead years passing before her mind like the mirage trees of the veld which appear only to vanish again. Matheson watched her curiously, anticipating something of her story. How many persons in that country, he wondered, had been hurt by the conflicting interests of the two white races? "And then," she added quietly, "all the happiness came to an end... everything came to an end with the war--with those three bitter years of struggle and hatred. The British were wrong--very wrong. I believe if I had not been married to a Dutchman I should have felt that. It is a black mark against our national honour." He noticed with faint surprise that in her condemnation of her country she associated herself with it for the first time--it might have been unconsciously, or it might have been that, in condemning it, some instinct of race caused her to identify herself with its disgrace. There was a suggestion of a desire to defend in that simple connection, to defend what she could not condone. "You don't know," she said--"no one could know who was not directly concerned--all the injustice of the war... I lost my husband, I lost my son--not fighting; it wouldn't have been so hard had they died fighting for their independence. They were both prisoners, in an internment camp near Matjesfontein. And they died there. My boy was delicate. I don't know... I suppose things were rough and he needed care. He developed consumption, and died and was buried there. I was not allowed to see him. I have never seen his grave." Her voice was slightly tremulous, but she betrayed no other sign of emotion, and resumed quietly with only a brief pause: