"I am glad to find you," she said, "so much of a philosopher. Now
talk to me for a few minutes about what you have been doing in Africa."
He obeyed her, and very soon she forgot the well dressed crowd of
men and women by whom they were surrounded, the light hum of gay
conversation, the band which was playing the fashionable air of
the moment. She saw instead the long line of men of many races,
stripped to the waist and toiling as though for their lives under
a tropical sun, she saw the great brown water-jars passed down the
line, men fainting beneath the burning sun and their places taken
by others. She heard the shrill whistle of alarm, the beaten drum;
she saw the spade exchanged for the rifle, and the long line of
toilers disappear behind the natural earthwork which their labours
had created. She saw black forms rise stealthily from the long,
rank grass, a flight of quivering spears, the horrid battle-cry of
the natives rang in her ears. The whole drama of the man's great
past rose up before her eyes, made a living and real thing by his
simple but vigorous language. That he effaced himself from it went
for nothing; she saw him there perhaps more clearly than anything
else, the central and domineering figure, a man of brains and nerve
who, with his life in his hands, faced with equal immovability a
herculean task and the chances of death.
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