Then he smiled. ‘And so are English girls,’ he said in a lower voice.
‘Hush, my friend, and look at the pretty picture below us.’
It was then that I saw Flora.
She was moving along the path we had just left and she was humming a little snatch of song.
Her step was more dancing than walking, and, in spite of her black dress, there was nothing but joy in her whole attitude.
She gave a sudden pirouette on her toes, and her black draperies swung out. At the same time she flung her head back and laughed outright.
As she did so a man stepped out from the trees. It was Hector Blunt.
The girl started. Her expression changed a little.
‘How you startled me - I didn’t see you.’
Blunt said nothing, but stood looking at her for a minute or two in silence.
‘What I like about you,’ said Flora, with a touch of malice, ‘is your cheery conversation.’
I fancy that at that Blunt reddened under his tan.
His voice, when he spoke, sounded different - it had a curious sort of humility in it.
‘Never was much of a fellow for talking.
Not even when I was young.’
‘That was a very long time ago, I suppose,’ said Flora gravely. I caught the undercurrent of laughter in her voice, but I don’t think Blunt did.
‘Yes,’ he said simply, ‘it was.’
‘How does it feel to be Methuselah?’ asked Flora.
This time the laughter was more apparent, but Blunt was following out an idea of his own.
‘Remember the johnny who sold his soul to the devil?
In return for being made young again?
There’s an opera about it.’
‘Faust, you mean?’ ‘That’s the beggar.
Rum story.
Some of us would do it if we could.’
‘Anyone would think you were creaking at the joints to hear you talk,’ cried Flora, half vexed, half amused.
Blunt said nothing for a minute or two. Then he looked away from Flora into the middle distance and observed to an adjacent tree trunk that it was about time he got back to Africa.
‘Are you going on another expedition - shooting things?’
‘Expect so.
Usually do, you know - shoot things, I mean.’
‘You shot that head in the hall, didn’t you?’
Blunt nodded. Then he jerked out, going rather red as he did so:
‘Care for some decent skins any time?
If so, I could get ‘em for you.’
‘Oh! please do,’ cried Flora.
‘Will you really?
You won’t forget?’
‘I shan’t forget,’ said Hector Blunt.
He added, in a sudden burst of communicativeness:
‘Time I went.
I’m no good in this sort of life.
Haven’t got the manners for it. I’m a rough fellow, no use in society. Never remember the things one’s expected to say.
Yes, time I went.’
‘But you’re not going at once,’ cried Flora.
‘No - not while we’re in all this trouble.
Oh! please. If you go ‘ She turned away a little.
‘You want me to stay?’ asked Blunt. He spoke deliberately but quite simply.
‘We all-’
‘I meant you personally,’ said Blunt, with directness.
Flora turned slowly back again and met his eyes.