"Yes, I think we are tired of each other," she pursued. "He never takes me anywhere with him now. Says a camp's no place for me, with nothing but men in it. As if I'd go if there were other women. Pah! I hate women. He used not to say that. Ah, well! And Justin! he really is a dear boy. I believe I am getting to love him, and when he comes back I shall give him a--Well, wait till he does. Perhaps by then I shall have changed my mood." She had dropped into a roomy rocking-chair--a sensuous, alluring personality as she lay back, her full supple figure swaying to the rhythmic movement of the rocker, kept going by one foot. "It is as Justin said," pursued the train of her meditations, "an abominable shame--a beastly shame, he called it--that I should be left all alone like this. Well, if I am, surely no one can blame me for consoling myself. But what a number of them there have been, all mad, quite mad, for the time, though not all so mad as poor Reggie. No, I oughtn't to be proud of that--still I suppose I am. It isn't every woman can say that a man has blown his brains out for her--and such a man as that too--a man of power and distinction, and wealthy enough even for me. If it hadn't been for Hilary, he needn't have done it. And, now Hilary and I are tired of each other. Ah!" The last aloud. She rose and went to the door. The sound of a distant shot, then another, had given rise to this diversion. It came from away behind the granite kopjes. Her deputed hunter had got to work at any rate, with what result time would show. The afternoon sun was declining. His rays swept warm and golden upon the spreading veldt and the pioneer residence, the latter looking, within its stockade, like a miniature fort. The air was wonderfully clear and pure; the golden effulgence upon the warm and balmy stillness rendering life well-nigh a joy in itself. The distant mellow shouts of the native herders, bringing in the cows; the thud of the hoofs of knee-haltered horses, nearer home, driven into their nightly stabling-- for lions were prone to sporadic visits, and nothing alive could with safely be left outside; and then, again and again from time to time, the distant crack of the gun away behind the great granite kopjes,--all seemed much nearer by reason of the sweet unearthly stillness. "He is doing me real service," said Hermia to herself, as she gazed forth over this, and as each far-away report of the double-barrel was borne to her through the sweet evening air. "I think I can see him, sparing no pains--no trouble--climbing those horrid rocks, blown, breathless, simply because I--_I_--have asked him to do so."