"I am sorry I was insincere. You got me there. I didn't know you were so observant. In future I'll be absolutely frank with you. I'll be frank now, even if it angers you. I asked you to come out because I think it is a shame for you to spend your evenings as you do. I think it is a shame that you should waste your life. I'm not so much sorry for you as savage with you. It's hateful in you. It's the one thing which spoils you from being absolutely fine." She broke off abruptly, startled at her own vehemence, immensely embarrassed, and horrified with herself. The man was staring at her, staring in amazement, incredulous and almost bewildered by the surprising rush of words. He had never in his life been so thunderstruck, nor had he ever before listened to such plain speaking. He was silent in face of this retort for which he had been in no sense prepared. "Oh, dear!" she exclaimed, aghast at her own daring. "What must you think of me? I never meant to attack you like this. It's--abominable." "Whatever I think of you," he answered, "I can never again call you insincere. You have hurled truths at me to-night. You were quite right in everything you said; but--forgive me--you were quite wrong in saying them. However, largely that's my own fault for provoking you. It was inconsiderate to push my inquiries; it would be illogical if I complained because you answered them. We'll wipe the incident out. At least we understand one another. In future, when I see you making your social effort, I shall recognise that you are started on your morality campaign." "Please don't," she said falteringly, with a catch so suggestive of repressed emotion in her tones that he repented the ill-nature of his words. He glanced down at her as she walked beside him along the dim road, hatless, with the soft hair shading her partly averted face; then he straightened his stooping shoulders with a jerk, and looked about him at the darkening landscape, and up at the sky, where the young moon rode serenely in a star-strewn cloudless sky. It was a fine night, warm and still; the wan moonlight pierced the dusk palely, revealing the road cutting like a path of silver across the velvety darkness of the veld. Some softening quality in the quiet beauty of the night, or it may have been in the sight of the partly turned face, with its look of hurt distress, penetrated the man's consciousness. His mood changed; a kinder note banished the harshness from his voice. He had wounded her deliberately, and he regretted it. "I'm a brute," he said in altered tones. "Don't heed my roughness; it is not meant. I had no wish to offend." "You did not offend," she answered. "But I am afraid that I did." "No," he said, but without conviction, she thought. "I asked for truth, and I got it. Perhaps that is what surprised me. The last thing a man expects to hear is the truth about himself. I didn't credit you with the possession of so much courage."