nothing. This, however, did not argue much. Her life had not been of the desert. She had spent her years in the study of men and women. I had spent mine with wild beasts. I could trust her to detect motives in men, give the warning note of danger from dangerous men; but the wild beasts and wilder men of the border were mine to watch and battle with, not hers.

She had seen nothing; evidently she feared nothing, and so was resting, resting in mind as in body. And as I glanced again over my shoulder and saw how entirely content she seemed, I was glad. Surely she depended entirely on me; on my watchfulness and my courage. And this made me more watchful and more resolute and stout of heart. A man likes to be trusted. A true man likes a true woman's trust, much indeed. A strong man likes to be leaned upon. It makes him stronger, braver, better. Let women never forget this. Admit that she, too, has her days of strength and endurance; and admit that she, too, has her peculiar fortress of strength and courage, and these also man respects and regards with piteous tenderness. But man, incapable of her finer and loftier courage and endurance, resents her invasion of his prerogative.

It is only a womanly man who can really love a manly woman. But to continue: Looking up a third time to this woman at my side, I saw that she had let her head sink low on her leaning arm. She was surely sleeping. How I liked her trust and her faith in me? And how I liked her courage, too, and her high quality of endurance. It was her courage that had brought me up here this night to the contemplation of awful and all-glorious Africa. Silently and without lifting a finger, she had shown me a world of burnished gold. I had surely seen God through her. We stood nearer together now than ever before. This single hour of indescribable glory should forever stand as an altar in the desert. Our souls had melted and flown and tided on, intermingled like molten gold in the golden atmosphere and the yellow scene that wrapped us round about, and no word had been said. When God speaks so audibly let man be silent.

I must have looked longer on the sleeping and trustful woman at my side than I ought to have looked, for on turning my eyes again to the horizon, there distinctly on the yellow sand and under the yellow moon moved, stealthily as a cat, yet graceful and grand, the most kingly beast I ever beheld. He did not look right nor left, but moved along with huge head in the air, slow and stately, and triumphant in his fearful symmetry and strength.

CHAPTER IV.

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