“I cannot!” Dominey groaned.

“But you will,” was the stern reply.  “Listen.”

An hour passed, and the voices of the two men had ceased.  The howling of the animals had lessened with the paling of the fires, and a slow, melancholy ripple of breeze was passing through the bush and lapping the surface of the river.  It was Von Ragastein who broke through what might almost have seemed a trance.  He rose to his feet, vanished inside the banda, and reappeared a moment or two later with two tumblers.  One he set down in the space provided for it in the arm of his guest’s chair.

“To-night I break what has become a rule with me,” he announced.  “I shall drink a whisky and soda.  I shall drink to the new things that may yet come to both of us.”

“You are giving up your work here?” Dominey asked curiously.

“I am part of a great machine,” was the somewhat evasive reply.  “I have nothing to do but obey.”

A flicker of passion distorted Dominey’s face, flamed for a moment in his tone.

“Are you content to live and die like this?” he demanded.  “Don’t you want to get back to where a different sort of sun will warm your heart and fill your pulses?  This primitive world is in its way colossal, but it isn’t human, it isn’t a life for humans.  We want streets, Von Ragastein, you and I. We want the tide of people flowing around us, the roar of wheels and the hum of human voices.  Curse these animals!  If I live in this country much longer, I shall go on all fours.”

“You yield too much to environment,” his companion observed.  “In the life of the cities you would be a sentimentalist.”

“No city nor any civilised country will ever claim me again,” Dominey sighed.  “I should never have the courage to face what might come.”

Von Ragastein rose to his feet.  The dim outline of his erect form was in a way majestic.  He seemed to tower over the man who lounged in the chair before him.

“Finish your whisky and soda to our next meeting, friend of my school days,” he begged.  “To-morrow, before you awake, I shall be gone.”

“So soon?”

“By to-morrow night,” Von Ragastein replied, “I must be on the other side of those mountains.  This must be our farewell.”

Dominey was querulous, almost pathetic.  He had a sudden hatred of solitude.

“I must trek westward myself directly,” he protested, “or eastward, or northward—­it doesn’t so much matter.  Can’t we travel together?”

Von Ragastein shook his head.

“I travel officially, and I must travel alone,” he replied.  “As for yourself, they will be breaking up here to-morrow, but they will lend you an escort and put you in the direction you wish to take.  This, alas, is as much as I can do for you.  For us it must be farewell.”

“Well, I can’t force myself upon you,” Dominey said a little wistfully.  “It seems strange, though, to meet right out here, far away even from the by-ways of life, just to shake hands and pass on.  I am sick to death of niggers and animals.”