“Yes. May I sit down?”

He drew a chair up beside me. It was the first time we had been alone together since that day at the Matoppos. As always, I felt that curious mixture of fascination and fear that he never failed to inspire in me.

“What is the news?” I asked.

“Smuts will be in Johannesburg tomorrow. I give this outbreak three days more before it collapses utterly. In the meantime the fighting goes on.”

“I wish,” I said, “that one could be sure that the right people were the ones to get killed. I mean the ones who wanted to fight⁠—not just all the poor people who happen to live in the parts where the fighting is going on.”

He nodded.

“I know what you mean, Anne. That’s the unfairness of war. But I’ve other news for you.”