When the party broke up, John leaving early, owing to pressure of work at the office, she said:
“I'm afraid not. I have to see the review through the press.”
“Oh, Belovedest!” she cried. “And I can't have Walter, because he's tied to his theatre.”
But the disappointment was on account of John, not on account of Herold.
“You 'll have Walter most of the afternoon,” remarked Lady Blount.
Stella laughed. “But I want everybody always,” she said disingenuously.
It had been arranged that while Sir Oliver should go to his longed-for and seldom-used club, and Lady Blount visit certain cronies, Herold should take Stella to the Zoological Gardens.
“Are you quite sure you can't come too, dear?”
He shook his head. “A newspaper office is a remorseless machine--just like a theatre. I must work.”
“I'm beginning to be frightfully jealous of work,” she said, with a laugh.
“It 's the noblest thing a man can do,” said Sir Oliver.
At the zoo, Stella found a world of wonder, which drove disappointment from her mind, and in her childlike gaiety and enthusiasm Herold forgot his heartache for a while. Sufficient for the moment was the joy of her exquisite presence, of her animated cheeks and dancing eyes, of her beautiful voice rippling into exclamations of rapture at monkey or secretary-bird or hippopotamus.
“These are springbok,” said Herold, in front of an inclosure.
Stella's brows knitted themselves into their customary network of perplexity.
“But I 've read that men go out to shoot springboks.”
“Men deliberately kill these beautiful, harmless things, with their melting eyes?” Her own filled with moisture. “Oh, Walter! How can men be so vile?” She knelt on the ground, and spoke to one, which poked its sensitive nose through the railing. “Oh, you dear! Oh, you perfectly lovely dear!”
Then she rose and took Herold by the arm, and a little shiver ran through her shoulders. “I suppose men kill everything. I 've found out they even kill one another. Would you or John kill creatures that did you no harm?”
She looked at him straight, with the searching candour of a spotless soul.
“I've shot birds which were afterwards eaten,” he replied uncomfortably. “You see, dear, you eat partridges and pheasants, don't you? Well, they have to be killed, just like sheep or oxen. Often in South Africa men's lives depend on the supply of springbok meat they can obtain.”