Over his head, the great arch of the sky shaded
from east to west through every tint of purple and blue and
turquoise and emerald-green, down to the golden band of the
afterglow. Then the stars began to dot the purple, their tiny points
of light serving only to emphasize its darkness, until the full moon
swept up across the heavens, throwing its mystic silver light over
all the land and adding tenfold to the empty loneliness of the
veldt. Sleep was out of the question. He could only snuggle more
closely into his blankets and wait for morning with what grace he
could. The stopping of his physical action only increased the
swiftness of his swirling thoughts which chased each other round and
round in circling eddies about one fixed point. That point was
Ethel.
Across the veldt at his left hand, he had watched the chain of
blockhouses which lay along the country between Kroonstad and
Lindley. Their squat outlines and the shining blue of their
corrugated iron roofs had caught his wandering attention, held it,
pinned it to other associations with those same blockhouses and, of
a sudden, had brought him to a full realization that griefs did not
come singly.
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