Between Snow and Fire — page 215: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“I WALK IN SHADOW.” old home again—and—don’t think me ungracious, but it will do me good to be entirely alone.” “That was how poor Milne used to argue,” said Hoste gravely. “ But they killed him all the same.” “Yes,” she replied, mastering the quick sharp spasm which the allusion evoked, “ But they were Gcalékas—not our people, who knew him.” Hoste shook his head. “You are committing suicide,” he said. ‘‘ And the worst of it is we have no power on earth to prevent you.” smile. “‘So let me go my own way with a good grace. Besides, with old Josane to look after me, I can’t come to much harm,” She had telegraphed to her late husband’s manager at Swaanepoel’s Hoek, reqthesting him to send the old cattle- herd to her at once. Three days later Josane arrived, and having commissioned Hoste to buy her afew cows andsome slaughter sheep, enough to supply her modest household. Eanswyth had carried out her somewhat eccentric plan. The utter loneliness of the place—the entire absence of life—the empty kraals and the silent homestead, all this is inexpressibly grateful to her crushed and lacerated spirit. And in the dead silence of those uninhabited rooms she conjures up the sweetest, the holiest memories. Her soli- tude, her complete isolation, conveys no terror—no spark of misgiving, for it is there that her very life has been lived. The dead stillness of the midnight hour, the ghostly creak- ing of a board, the hundred and one varying sounds be- gotten of silence and darkness, inspire her with no alarm, for her imagination peoples these empty and deserted rooms with life once more. She can see him as she saw him in life, moving about the place on different errands bent. ‘There is his favourite chair; there his place at the table. His personality seems still to pervade the whole house, his spirit to hover around her, to permeate her whole being, here as it could nowhere else. But it was on first entering his room, which still con- tained a few possessions too cumbersome or too worthless to carry away—a trunk or two and a few old clothes—here it was that that awful and vivid contrast struck her in over- whelming force. | What an expression there is in such poor and useless ‘““No, you haven’t,” she assented -with the shadow of a _ 4 — Eomichbooks.com _