When she struck thee with the knife in the sleeping
place of the White Queen I was there also; when thou didst
let her slip away like a snake in the stones I saw thee, and
I knew that she had bewitched thee and that a true man had abandoned
the truth, and he who aforetime loved a straight path had taken
a crooked way. Forgive me, my father, if my words are sharp,
but out of a full heart are they spoken. See her no more, so
shalt thou go down with honour to the grave. Else because of
the beauty of a woman that weareth as a garment of fur shalt
thou be even as I am, and perchance with more cause. I have
said.'
Throughout this long and eloquent address Good had been perfectly
silent, but when the tale began to shape itself so aptly to his
own case, he coloured up, and when he learnt that what had passed
between him and Sorais had been overseen he was evidently much
distressed. And now, when at last he spoke, it was in a tone
of humility quite foreign to him.
'I must say,' he said, with a bitter little laugh, 'that I scarcely
thought that I should live to be taught my duty by a Zulu; but
it just shows what we can come to. I wonder if you fellows can
understand how humiliated I feel, and the bitterest part of it
is that I deserve it all.
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