And perhaps, if Dick had not got ill when he did, the end would have come quickly after all, one way or another. Perhaps she might have died quite soon, as her mother had done, after a brief illness, simply because she did not want particularly to live. Or she might have run away again, in another desperate impulse towards escape, and this time done it sensibly, and learned how to live again, as she was made to live, by nature and upbringing, alone and sufficient to herself, But there was a sudden and unexpected change in her life, which staved off the disintegration for a little while. A few months after she had run away, and six years after she had married him, Dick got ill, for the first time.

It was a brilliant, cool, cloudless June. This was the time of the year Mary liked best: warm during the day, but with a tang in the air; and several months to go before the smoke from the veld fires thickened into the sulphurous haze that dimmed the colours of the bush. The coolness gave her back some of her vitality: she was tired, yes, but it was not unbearable; she clutched at the cold months as if they were a shield to ward off the dreaded listlessness of the heat that would follow.

In the early mornings, when Dick had gone to the lands, she would walk gently over the sandy soil in front of the house, looking up into the high blue dome that was fresh as ice crystals, a marvellous clear blue, with never a cloud to stain it, not for months and months. The cold of the night was still in the soil. She would lean down to touch it, and touched, too, the rough brick of the house, that was cool and damp against her fingers. Later, when it grew warm, and the sun seemed as hot as in summer, she would go out into the front and stand under a tree on the edge of the clearing (never far into the bush where she was afraid) and let the deep shade rest her. The thick olive-green leaves overhead let through chinks of clear blue, and the wind was sharp and cold. And then, suddenly, the whole sky lowered itself into thick grey blanket, and for a few days it was a different world, with a soft dribble of rain, and it was really cold: so cold she wore a sweater and enjoyed the sensation of shivering inside it. But this never lasted long.

It seemed that from one half hour to the next the heavy grey would grow thin, showing blue behind, and then the sky would seem to lift, with layers of dissolving cloud in the middle air; all at once, there would be a high blue sky again, all the grey curtains gone. The sunshine dazzled and glittered, but held no menace; this was not the sun of October, that insidiously sapped from within.

There was a lift in the air, an exhilaration. Mary felt healed – almost. Almost, she became as she had been, brisk and energetic, but with a caution in her face and in her movements that showed she had not forgotten the heat would return. She tenderly submitted herself to this miraculous three months of winter, when the country was purified of its menace. Even the veld looked different, flaming for a few brief weeks into red and gold and russet, before the trees became solid masses of heavy green. It was as if this winter had been sent especially for her, to send a tingle of vitality into her, to save her from her helpless dullness. It was her winter; that was how she felt. Dick noticed it; he was attentively solicitous to her after her running away – for her return had bound him to her in gratitude for ever. If he had been a spiteful sort of man, he might have gone cold against her because it had really been such an easy way to win mastery over him, the sort of trick women use to defeat their men. But it never occurred to him. And after all, her running away had been genuine enough; though it had had the results that any calculating woman could have foreseen.

He was gentle and tolerant, curbing his rages; and he was pleased to see her with new life, moving around the house With more zest, a softened, rather pathetic look on her face, as if she were clinging to a friend she knew must leave her. He even asked her again to come down on the farm with him; he felt a need to be near her, for he was secretly afraid she might vanish again one day when he was away. For although their marriage was all wrong, and there was no real understanding between them, he had become accustomed to the double solitude that any marriage, even a bad one, becomes. He could not imagine returning to a house where there was no Mary. And even her rages against her servants seemed to him, during that short time, endearing; he was grateful for the resurgence of vitality that showed itself in an increased energy over the shortcomings and laziness of her houseboy.

But she refused to help him on the farm. It seemed to her a cruelty that he should suggest it. Up here, on the rise, even with the tumbled heap of big boulders behind the house that blocked the sweeping winds, it was cool compared with the fields shut down between ridges of rock and trees. Down there, one would not be able to tell it was winter! Even now, looking down into the hollow one could see the heat shimmering over buildings and earth. No, let her stay where she was: she wouldn't go down with him. He accepted it, grieved and snubbed as always; but still, happier than he had been for a long time. He liked to see her at night, sitting peacefully with her hands folded, on the sofa, cuddling herself luxuriously inside her sweater, shivering cheerfully with the cold. For these nights the roof cracked and crinkled like a thousand fireworks, because of the sharp alternations between the day% hot sun and the frosts of night. He used to watch her reaching up her hand to touch the icy-cold iron of the roof, and felt disconsolate and helpless against this mute confession of how much she hated the summer months. He even began to think of putting in ceilings. He secretly got out his farm books and calculated what they would cost. But the last season had been a bad one for him; and the end of his impulse to protect her from what she dreaded was a si

and a determination to wait until next year, when things might be better.

Once she did go down with him to the lands. It was when he told her there had been frost. She stood over the cold earth in the vlei one morning before the sun rose, laughing with pleasure, because of the crusty film of white over the earth… 'Frost!' she said. 'Who would believe it, in this baked, god-forsaken spot.

She picked up pieces of the crackling flimsy stuff and rubbed them between blue hands, inviting him to do the same, sharing with him this moment of delight. They were moving gently towards a new relation; they were more truly together than they had ever been. But then it was that he became ill; and the new tenderness between them, which might have grown into something strong enough to save them both, was not yet strong enough to survive this fresh trouble.

For one thing, Dick had never been ill before, although this was a malaria district and he had lived in it so long. Perhaps he had had malaria in his blood for years and never known it? He always took quinine, every night, during the wet season, but not when it grew cold. Somewhere on the farm there must be, he said, a tree trunk filled with stagnant water, in a warm enough spot for mosquitoes to breed; or perhaps an old rusting tin in a shady place where the sun could not reach the water to evaporate it. In any event, weeks after one could expect fever in the usual way, Mary saw Dick come up from the lands one evening, pale and shivering. She offered him quinine and aspirin, which he took, and afterwards fell into bed, without eating his supper. The next morning, angry with himself and refusing to believe he was ill, he was off to work as usual, wearing a heavy leather jacket as a futile prophylactic against violent shivering fits. At ten in the morning, with the fever sweat pouring down his face and neck and soaking his shirt, he crawled up the lull and got between blankets, half-unconscious already.