As the last words left his lips, Laurence learned in just one brief flash of a second exactly what he wanted to know. But the look of startled pain in Lindela's face gave way to one of surprise. "Of leaving them?" she echoed. "Has the Great Great One, then, ordered you to begone, Nyonyoba?" "Not yet. But it will be so. Listen! At the full of the second moon." A cry escaped her. She understood. For a moment the self-control of her savage ancestors entirely forsook her. She became the child of nature--all human. "It shall not be! It shall not be!" The passion, the abandonment in the soft, liquid Zulu tone--in the large eyes, transforming the whole attractive face--touched even him--penetrated even the scaly armour which encased his hardened heart. Considerations of expediency no longer reigned there alone as he stood face to face with the chief's daughter. She was a magnificent specimen of womanhood, he decided, gazing with unfeigned admiration upon her splendid frame, upon the unconscious grace of her every movement. "If I go, I return not ever," he went on, resolved to strike while the iron was hot--to strike as hard as he knew how. "Yet how to remain--for the brother of the king is so great a chief that he who would approach him with _lobola_[3] would need to own half the wealth of the Ba-gcatya people. Now I, who owned much wealth, am yet poor to-day, for the Ba-gcatya have killed all my slaves, and the king has taken my ivory and goods." The girl's eyes sparkled. Perhaps she too had learned something she wanted to know; indeed, it must have been so, for her whole face was lit up with a gladsome light, a wonderfully attractive light. "Perchance the king will return some of it," she said. "Yet you are a white man, and strong, Nyonyoba--are all white men like you, I wonder?--and can overcome all difficulties. Listen! You shall not leave us at the full of the second moon. Now, farewell--and--forget not my name."[4]