“ Ann by contrast was an impudent self-assertive virago with the worth at best of a good drudge. After a year and a half's absence from Europe he made this rediscovery of Lucy, set against a background of Savage Africa—coarse landscapes, jagged rocks, unwieldy trees, bush conflagrations, naked men, wild beasts just kept at bay. (On moonlight nights they could actually descry the grey-white forms of lions and hyenas padding noiselessly round the precincts of their boma.) These violent incongruities made her seem to him a being of exquisite refinement and yet of physical charm. ”

“ Whilst these letters were being carried to their destination by two lithe, naked men of red-brown skin, with hair done up in periwigs of twine soaped with mutton fat and the same red-ochre as coloured their sleek bodies, men who carried knobkerries in their waistcords and long-bladed spears in the right hand, great oval shields on the left arm, and who ran on sandalled feet a steady six miles an hour when they were on the road: Lucy and Roger disposed themselves to await patiently the news which—they felt—was to determine their fate. ”

“ Returning health, intense happiness, the dawning hope of a bright future were dispelling the anæmia and giving back to her face and neck the tinted white of a healthy skin, warmed in tone by a good circulation. There was a sparkle of animation in her violet eyes and a new lustre in her brown gold hair.
It would be a good thing for both, he felt, if he found the Stotts as soon as possible and induced them to join company in a march to the coast. ”

“ One way and another, Lucy was fretting and worrying herself into a state of illness; afraid to go out or to show herself; loathing life in this low-ceilinged, vermin-infested bedroom, hot by day, stifling at night, as she lay inside the mosquito netting in the blackest darkness, shuddering at the possibilities beyond the bed. Rats romped and squeaked and occasionally fell from the rafters into the sagging mosquito net; scorpions, no doubt, were lurking in the crevices of the floor-boards to sting her toes if she stepped out of the insufferably hot bed. ”

“ Lucy's thoughts were abruptly brought back to Eastern Africa and discipline in her school class; for a too venturesome rat, darting up a rafter, had lost his footing and fallen plop amongst the girls—the "Big-geru," and they, upsetting forms and throwing away slates, had flung themselves in a struggling heap on the spot where the rat had landed. From out of the mêlée one triumphant young woman rose up, with her smock torn from top to bottom, but holding up a damaged, dying rat by its broken tail. ”

“ Lucy, feeling she could do nothing to help and had better not look at the caked patches of dried blood which the porters were removing, had withdrawn herself to a folding chair placed by Halima under the thin shade of a fire-scorched tree. Ann was examining the vestiges of the Stott property which the looters had left behind: school books and primers in the Swahili language, empty ink-pots, broken slates, enamelled iron plates and some substantial tables of native timber, too heavy for either the fugitives or their enemies to carry away. ”

“ John was uncertain where to fire even when he had found his loaded rifle. He dared not shoot into the midst of the growls, lest the bullet should kill the plunging donkeys or strike one of his men. They in their desperation—and, to do them justice, in their desire to save the white man and his wife—were tackling the lion with firebrands, yet feared to shoot his huge body—tangled up with tent ropes and tent flaps—lest they should shoot master or mistress. Lucy swooned across the bed with terror when she felt the lion's body pressed against the thin canvas of the tent wall.... ”

“ Sibyl tried by broken phrases, and half-uttered hints, to convey the idea that Lord Silchester being nearly sixty—at any rate close on fifty-six—and not of robust health, might not live for ever; though really she wouldn't mind if she died first, men were so perfectly hateful, and so was your family—if you were a woman. You were expected to do all you could for your family, and abused into the bargain by others who held you bound by foolish promises made when you were a mere girl without any knowledge of the world. ”

“ Lord Silchester in his fondness for landscape beauty had preferred a lovely, unkempt, autumn-wistful wilderness to a possible brick-field, though to a geologist the clay was almost crying out to be turned to the service of man. He liked great spaces without a sign of man's habitation to mar the poem. Roger, though he had a strongly developed sense of the beautiful in Nature, yet combined with it a realization that much waste land in the England of latter days, and even in Scotland, is an offence and a temptation to discontent on the part of the landless. ”

“ At length, when John's experiences in London had come to an end and the two dishes of cherries had replaced the treacle pudding, whilst the servant handed round in tumblers our own superlative Sparkling Cider, Lucy cleared her throat and said, "I suppose John will be leaving you very early to-morrow morning?"
"Eh?" returned Mrs. Baines, fixing her cold grey eyes on Lucy. She had heard perfectly well, but she thought it more consistent with dignity not to lend too ready an ear to the girl's remarks. Lucy repeated more distinctly her question. ”

“ He felt tenderly and pitifully towards Lucy, carrying her country prettiness and innocency into savage Africa, embarking on a life of unexpected frightfulness, unspeakable weariness, of monotony, varied by shocks of terror, by sights of bloodshed and obscenity that might thrill or titillate a strong man, but must inevitably take the bloom off a woman's mind. ”

“ Lucy took Roger's arm—how it thrilled her, how like an impossible dream come true!—and followed by Halima and the machila reached the patch of blue shade made by a group of candelabra euphorbias and fig trees with thick glossy leaves and pendent branches. The ground underneath was absolutely clear of any cover for snakes and was whitish with the ashes of many a cooking fire, lit here by caravans arriving at evening and preferring to postpone their interviews with Chief Mbogo—sometimes a rapacious gentleman over his dues—till the morning light. ”

“ At the grained front door a cat was waiting to be let in with an air about her as if she too had returned a little late from church or chapel. A strong, rich odour of roast beef filled the air and drowned the scent of hayfields. This intensified the feeling of vulgar comfort which permeated the house when the door was opened by Mr. Baines, senior, and increased the pious satisfaction of the cat, who arched her black body and rubbed herself coyly against her master's Sunday trousers. ”

“ Lucy, sharply ordered by Ann not to over-exert herself, sat in the shade in a deck chair, very apprehensive as to the future and worried that Roger should have gone away.
The news that white people were back at Burungi—as this station was called—penetrated quickly through this seemingly deserted region. So often in Africa there occurs this wireless telegraphy, really due perhaps to the lurking here and there in the brush and herbage of invisible natives, observing what goes on and bounding away noiselessly to carry the news to other prowlers. ”

“ Don't you believe in anything then?"
"You'll find, Lucy"—Brentham would reply—"that the word 'believe' is very much abused. You may 'think' of such and such a thing as probable, as possible, as desirable—often, indeed, the wish is father to the thought. But to imagine it, is not to believe in it; in the same way in which we are compelled by irresistible conviction to believe in some fact or consequence or event, whether we like it or not. We can only 'believe' what can be tested by the evidence of our senses, by some incontestable piling up of evidence or record of historical facts.... ”

“ A year after their first meeting he had proposed to Maud, and had renewed this offer of marriage on two other occasions. But she had been firm in her refusal, though she appreciated his good looks and frank manliness, and almost loved him for his music. But she declared the difference in their ages—twelve years—was an insuperable objection; secondly she did not wish to marry, so that she might always live with Roger and Lucy and their children. If they failed her she would make a career of her own—become a New Woman and agitate for women's rights. ”

“ So Lucy at last, in dread of snubs if she entered the battledore and shuttlecock conversation or of revealing her utter ignorance of the ways of smart society, fell silent at meal-times and after meals. When the others played cards or roulette on a miniature green table, she would read a book in a corner or steal away up to bed before the maids had done her room for the night. And gradually she developed the red, moist nose that comes to a woman who cries in secret, and there were wrought other changes in good looks and figure attend ant on her condition. ”

“ Although the upstairs bedroom that Lucy was to occupy smelt, like all the rest of the premises, of copra, aniseed, cockroaches, dried fish, shark's liver oil, curry-powder, rats' and bats' manure, in one badly mingled essence, with this and that ingredient sometimes prevailing, it seemed clean and airy, and there was some grace and refinement in the clean bed linen, white mosquito curtain, and bunch of Frangipani flowers in a Persian pottery vase. ”

“ There were people in this wilderness of broad valleys and abrupt escarpments, tribes already known to Roger, primitive Bushman-like folk, speaking languages full of clicks, going stark naked, without domestic animals or agriculture, nomad hunters with bows and arrows, straying from the culture of fifty thousand years ago into awakened Africa: where white nations were fighting for predominance with gas and steel, aeroplane and armoured car. ”

“ To have started to run would—they knew—have been fatal. They just stood about, silent, while the advancing army—perhaps three hundred in number—suddenly halted and lay down behind their large, gaily-painted shields. The two men of the expedition who knew the Masai language drew up to the Kiongozi—unfortunately the Masai guides were away, out hunting with Roger. A hundred yards distant there stood out one superb Masai warrior, the leader of the party; a naked figure of perfect manhood, red in colour, with a naturally brown skin, raddled with ochre and powdered with the dust of the red ground. ”

“ They would revel for the last time in the beauty of Iraku and the Happy Valley, their Crowned cranes and pea-fowl, their tame gazelles and duikers, their quaint menagerie of monkeys; their wonderful flower garden—Iraku grew everything: orchids and mignonette, roses and lilies, petunias and pelargoniums, Strelitsia reginae and Disa uniflora.... He would wind up his financial connexion with the Concession and retire from it a rich man, perhaps retaining a sleeping partnership in its concerns: for it was entangled with his heart-strings. ”