In all ways his attitude was antagonistic. Commissioners were lazy people, intent on having a good time and “their shooting.” Sanders, who had never shot a wild beast in his life, save for the pot or to rid himself of a pressing danger, said nothing.

“A thoroughly nasty fellow,” said Hamilton.

But it was Bones who suffered the heaviest casualty to his amour-propre.

Left alone with the visitor in the hour before dinner, Bones cunningly led the conversation towards the Surrey Star and Middlesex Plain Dealer.

“I suppose, sir, when you read my jolly old letter, you thought I had a fearful nerve?”

“Your letter?” Mr. Haben allowed his head to fall in Bones’s direction.

“…about seeing the place with your own holy old eyes,” and Bones went on, unconscious of the doom which awaited him, and explained fully his reason for writing, the thought that led him to, write, the incident that induced the thought.

“My good young man, you don’t imagine that His Majesty’s Government would send a Minister of State flying off to Africa because an empty-headed subaltern wrote letters to an obscure county journal, do you?”

Bones opened and closed his eyes very quickly.

“I came–but why should I tell you?” asked Nickerson Haben wearily. “You may be assured that your letter had nothing to do with my coming. As I said before, you officers have too much time on your hands. It is a matter which requires looking into.”

But it was at dinner that he touched the zenith of his boorishness. The dinner was bad; he hated palm-nut chop; sweet potatoes made him ill; the chicken was tough, the coffee vile. Happily he had brought his own cigars.

Bones spent that trying hour wondering what would happen to him if he leant across the table and batted an Under-Secretary with a cut-glass salt-cellar.

Only Sanders showed no sign of annoyance. Not a muscle of his face moved when Mr. Nickerson Haben made the most unforgivable of all suggestions. He did this out of sheer ignorance and because of that streak of commonness which was his very own.

“A native woman is a native woman,” said Sanders quietly. “Happily, I have only had gentlemen under my control, and that complication has never arisen.”

Mr. Haben smiled sceptically; he was sourest when he smiled.

“Very noble,” he said dryly, “and yet one has heard of such things happening.”

Hamilton was white with rage. Bones stared open-mouthed, like a boy who only dimly understood. The pale man asked a question and, to the amazement of the others, Sanders nodded.

“Yes, I brought a girl down from Chimbiri,” he said; “she is at present in the Houssa lines with the wife of Sergeant Abiboo. I hardly know what to do with her.”

“I suppose not,” more dryly yet. “A prisoner, I suppose?”

“N–no”–Sanders hesitated–seemed confused in Haben’s eyes. “She has a peculiar brand of magic which rather confounds me–“

Here Mr. Nickerson Haben laughed.

“That stuff!” he said contemptuously. “Let me see your magician.”

Bones was sent to fetch her–he swore loudly all the way across the dark square.

“That is what we complain about,” said Mr. Haben in the time of waiting. “You fellows are in the country so long that you get niggerised.” (Sanders winced. “Nigger” is a word you do not use in Africa.) “You absorb their philosophies and superstitions. Magic–good God!”

He waggled his long head hopelessly.

“My poor wife believed in the same rubbish–she came from one of the Southern states–had a black mammy who did wonderful things with chicken bones!”

Sanders had not credited him with a wife. When he learnt that the poor lady had died he felt that worse things could happen to a woman.

“Appendicitis–an operation…fool of a doctor.” Mr. Haben unbent so far as to scatter these personal items. “As I said before, you people–hum…”

Agasaka stood in the doorway, “missionary dressed” as they say. Her figure was concealed in a blue cotton “cloth” wrapped and pinned about her to the height of her breast.

“This is the lady, eh? Come here!” He beckoned her and she came to him. “Let us see her magic…speak to her!”

Sanders nodded.

“This man wishes to see your magic, Agasaka; he is a great chief amongst my people.”

She did not answer.

“Not bad-looking,” said Nickerson, and did a thing which amazed these men, for he rose and, putting his hand under her chin, raised her face to his. And there was something in his queer, hard eyes that she read, as we may read the printed word. The streak of commonness was abominably broad and raw-edged.

“You’re not so bad for a nig…”

He dropped his hands suddenly; they saw his face pucker hideously. He was looking at a woman, a handsome woman with deep shadows under her eyes. It was the face he often saw and always tried to forget.