For a while Matheson and his companion rode in unbroken silence. He was busy with the thoughts which Herman Nel's disclosure had set fermenting in his brain. The course he would follow was plain. But it was not easy after the Kriges' courtesy to leave them summarily; it was not possible, he felt, to do so and refuse to carry Krige's message without causing offence. The risk had to be taken however. He could no longer lend himself to the furtherance of a matter which he now admitted freely he had not approved of from the first. He ought never to have allowed himself to be mixed up in the affair. It was not easy to draw back; it was less easy to rid himself of the influences which, spreading over three weeks of intimate daily life with Honor--for it was always in Honor his thoughts centred--affected him powerfully, changing all his view of things, altering his entire perspective. It was amazing what a grip this girl had succeeded in getting on his imagination. Try how he would he could not shake his thoughts clear of her. Abruptly he glanced in her direction. She rode with the reins loose on the horse's neck; her face, which was partly averted, wore an air of abstraction, the eyes fixed with unfocussed vision upon the distance. She too seemed to have much to occupy her thoughts. "I say!" he said, and broke off suddenly, not knowing after all what he intended saying. She turned her face and looked towards him with gravely inquiring eyes. "I've got to go away," he jerked out after a pause. "I've got to get back. This is very pleasant, but... it has to come to an end." "Yes," she agreed, and looked a little puzzled--"of course. We expected you would be leaving shortly. I'm sorry." "I don't want to go." He was insistent on this point. "I regret going--immensely." He paused, and added after a thoughtful moment: "For some reasons I regret that I ever came." "That is not very kind," she said. "No," he allowed; "it doesn't sound kind. But... you know. You understand... I've been here too long." "I think," she said, breaking the short embarrassed silence with a remark so apposite that he was considerably taken aback, "that Herman Nel's company has affected you. I did not wish to leave you with him." "Why not?" he asked. "He is a man who holds mistaken ideas," she replied. "In my opinion he is a very fine man," he returned, a note of quiet admiration in his voice. "But I don't see what grounds you have for assuming my mind to be so responsive to tutelage. I am not more readily impressed than most people."