“There must have been giants once,” I said dreamily. “And their children were just like children are today⁠—they played with handfuls of pebbles, piling them up and knocking them down, and the more cleverly they balanced them, the better pleased they were. If I were to give a name to this place I should call it The Country of Giant Children.”

“Perhaps you’re nearer the mark than you know,” said Colonel Race gravely. “Simple, primitive, big⁠—that is Africa.”

I nodded appreciatively.

“You love it, don’t you?” I asked.

“Yes. But to live in it long⁠—well, it makes one what you would call cruel. One comes to hold life and death very lightly.”

“Yes,” I said, thinking of Harry Rayburn. He had been like that too. “But not cruel to weak things?”

“Opinions differ as to what are and are not ‘weak things,’ Miss Anne.”

There was a note of seriousness in his voice which almost startled me. I felt that I knew very little really of this man at my side.

“I meant children and dogs, I think.”

“I can truthfully say I’ve never been cruel to children or dogs. So you don’t class women as weak things?”

I considered.

“No, I don’t think I do⁠—though they are, I suppose. That is, they are nowadays. But Papa always said that in the beginning men and women roamed the world together, equal in strength⁠—like lions and tigers⁠—”

“And giraffes?” interpolated Colonel Race slyly.

I laughed. Everyone makes fun of that giraffe.