Apparently there were to be only landscapes in David's picture gallery. Portraits, however lovely, were not admitted. A very lovely face was opposite to him at the little table. A firm white chin rested thoughtfully in the rounded palm of the hand on which gleamed his golden wedding-ring. Soft grey eyes, half-veiled by drooping lids and long dark lashes, looked wistfully, earnestly, at the thin lines of his strong eager face. Diana was striving to imprint upon her memory a portrait of David, which should not fade. But David polished the window at intervals with his table-napkin, and assiduously studied Hampshire orchards, and frost-covered fields and gardens.

*

Back in their own compartment, within an hour of Southampton, Diana made a desperate attempt to arrive at a clear understanding about the rapidly approaching future—those two years, possibly three, while they would be husband and wife, yet on different sides of the globe.

She was sitting beside David, who occupied the corner seat, facing the engine, on her left. Diana had been seated in the corner opposite to him; but had crossed over, in order to sit beside him; and now asked him, on pretext of being dazzled, to draw down the blinds on his side of the compartment.

David complied at once, shutting out the pale wintry sunlight; which, pale though it was, yet made a golden glory of Diana's hair.

Thus excluded from his refuge in the leafless orchards, David launched into a graphic description of the difficulties and adventure of African travel.

"You see," he was saying, "the jungle grasses grow to such a height that it becomes almost impossible to force one's way through them; and they make equally good cover for wild beasts, or mosquitoes"—when Diana laid her hand upon his coat sleeve.

Either the sleeve was thick, or David was dense—or both. The account of African swamps continued, with increased animation.

"As soon as the wet season is over, the natives fire the grass all around their villages; and then wild beasts get no cover for close approach; shooting becomes possible, and the women can get down to the river to fetch water, or into the forests to cut firewood. The burning kills millions of mosquitoes, makes it possible to go out in safety, and to shoot game. When the grass is high, mosquitoes are rampant, and game impossible to view. Before the burning was done round my place, last year, I found a hippopotamus in my flower garden, when I came down to breakfast one morning. He had danced a cake-walk among my oleanders, which was a trial, because oleanders bloom gloriously all the year round when once they get a hold."

Suddenly Diana turned upon him, took his right hand between both hers, and caught it to her, impulsively.

"David," she said, "do you consider it right in our last hour together, completely to ignore the person you have just married?"

David's startled face showed very white against the green window-blind.