except Benita's heart.

Her health had quite come back to her; indeed, never before had she felt
so strong and well. But the very soul had withered in her breast. All
day she thought, and all night she dreamed of the man who, in cold
blood, had offered up his life to save a helpless woman and her child.
She wondered whether he would have done this if he had heard the answer
that was upon her lips. Perhaps that was why she had not been given time
to speak that answer, which might have made a coward of him. For nothing
more had been heard of Robert Seymour; indeed, already the tragedy of
the ship _Zanzibar_ was forgotten. The dead had buried their dead, and
since then worse disasters had happened in the world.

But Benita could not bury her dead. She rode about the veld, she sat
by the lake and watched the wild fowl, or at night heard them flighting
over her in flocks. She listened to the cooing of the doves, the booming
of the bitterns in the reeds, and the drumming of the snipe high in air.
She counted the game trekking along the ridge till her mind grew weary.
She sought consolation from the breast of Nature and found none; she
sought it in the starlit skies, and oh! they were very far away. Death
reigned within her who outwardly was so fair to see.

In the society of her father, indeed, she took pleasure, for he loved
her, and love comforted her wounded heart. In that of Jacob Meyer also
she found interest, for now her first fear of the man had died away,
and undoubtedly he was very interesting; well-bred also after a fashion,
although a Jew who had lost his own faith and rejected that of the
Christians.

He told her that he was a German by birth, that he had been sent to