Chalmers hesitated. “Why do I find it so confoundedly hard to come at? I’m not writing a diary of accidents and self-congratulations like the explorer fellows. The only point in the whole thing is just what I can’t manage to bring out!” He mused for a moment. “The whole place white with hail after the storm ... thick on the thatch of the big, rambling house ... the verandah eaves dripping ... then the rain stopping, and a miraculous silence after the tumult ... no light anywhere except long, low, continual flashes on the horizon at the edge of the veldt--and then she came out, dressed in something of the poor old vrouw’s that hung about her lovely, slim figure like a carnival joke. I was wondering thickly where I should spend the night. I had introduced her as my wife, of course ... and they had muttered something about the other room’s being in use. The good old souls had gone off to bed with the ceasing of the storm, after our little caravan was housed down in the farm niggers’ quarters. But naturally I couldn’t have explained to them, anyhow.... The lightning was about as regular as a guttering candle set in a draught--but about a thousand candle-power when it did come. And, by one apocalyptic flash, I saw her face. She didn’t say anything; she merely laid her hand on my shoulder. And I, who had been bursting with the wish to talk, to tell her, to lay my head on her knees and weep, out of pure self-pity and desire--all those cub-like emotions--didn’t say anything either. I only saw--in that one flash--the working of her lips, the prophetic brilliancy of her eyes. We turned and went into the house without a word. She wanted me, too; that was what it came to. Other things being equal, the utter isolation of a man and a woman must do one of two things--must put a burning fire or the polar ice between them. I knew what it had done to me; I hadn’t been able to guess what it had done to her. I had rather been betting on the polar ice.”