'Have you found Venus?' she repeated, increasingly amazed at his expression.

Joseph looked both triumphant and sheepish. 'Venus came back of her own accord, poor girl,' he said at last. 'She was painfully thin and ill. She had spent a year hiding in the savannas. I don't know how she managed to exist. She implored me to take her back.'

Theo, remembering his violence when Venus ran away, his threats, his vow to sell her to the Spaniards, said wonderingly: 'And you've taken her back? Didn't you even punish her?' 'She's learned her lesson,' said Joseph quickly. 'She's suffered much. You should have seen her kissing my hands in gratitude, heard her heartbroken cries. She says she wishes for nothing in life but to serve me—and my family, of course'. Theo opened her lips to protest, but thought better of it. She would not disturb Joseph's picture of himself as kind, compassionate master. Perhaps the girl had suffered, perhaps she was contrite and would behave. Yet the thought of that sleek golden-brown trouble-maker once more ensconced in the quarters made her angry and unhappy.

'I know you have a prejudice against Venus, but I thought you would be pleased at my forgiving her. You are always preaching tolerance in the treatment of the other slaves'. Though Joseph scowled, there was a note of genuine hurt in his voice. He tugged at his whiskers, and, turning a little so that she could not see his face, he added slowly, 'Sometimes I feel that nothing I do pleases you.'

She looked up quickly, touched by his rare humbleness. 'Do you really care to please me still? We have been married three years.'

He stirred, turning still farther from her. 'You've seemed so cold, so indifferent of late. Even your letters——'

She drew a sharp breath. Oh, why, she thought passionately, wrapped up in our separate worlds, do we all hurt each other? Insensitive as he is, he has felt the change in me. Now that I know what love is, I can no longer pretend to myself that I feel it for him. Yet he's my husband, the father of my baby. Even if I am unhappy, we need not both be so.

She rose and went over to Joseph and, taking his resisting hand in hers, pressed it gently against her cheek. Gradually his rigidity relaxed, his expression changed into one which was too familiar. He pulled her violently against him.