Sinclair took very kindly to the parental role. Young things appealed to him; and he was immensely proud of his daughter, whose coming had completed the home circle, had indeed filled the home and banished for ever the quiet of former days. He never tired of watching Esme with the child. She suggested the incarnate picture of motherhood, with the brooding look of love and contentment in her eyes. The gap was filled; and the old life with Paul slipped further into the background of her thoughts. And in England a man, newly released from a German prison camp, ill, half-starved, with nerves racked and shaken, a physical wreck, was thinking of his wife in Africa, and wondering how life had gone with her in the years since he had left her because he had felt himself to be unfit to breathe the same air with her. Had she grieved for him, he wondered? Or had she felt contempt for his weakness, blamed him for a coward, for leaving her secretly like a criminal? The years since he had left his home were so many that it was more than possible she believed him to be dead. Several times since he was made a prisoner, dining the early days of war, he had written to her; but, receiving no replies to his communications, he concluded that these, for some obscure reason of his captors, were never sent. Many men, like himself, had been similarly cut off from all communication with their friends. He had considered the question of writing after his release; but decided against it; he would wait until he saw her. His return would prove a shock in any case. He preferred to reserve explanations until he could offer them in person and comfort her for the sorrow of their years of separation. Not once did it ever enter Paul Hallam's thoughts that his wife, even though she might believe him to be dead--which he considered likely-- would have married again. It simply did not occur to him. For some months he remained in a convalescent home in England, recovering slowly from the privations of prison life in Germany: for a further period he waited for the purpose of proving for his own satisfaction that, with every facility to indulge his former vice, the desire no longer tormented him. Then, in a mood of deep thankfulness, with a heart surcharged with love, and with an intense longing for Esme exciting his imagination, he sailed for Cape Town in the first available ship.