“It was the night of the new moon when I went there,” she said. “And Onyango was afraid to go to the Waluguru for the same reason.”
He said: “Yes . . . it’s a matter that needs thinking over.” And then, after a long pause: “But I’m thankful that I came here.”
“For my sake,” she said softly. He only smiled.
After that they did not speak of Godovius for a long time. I think those evenings must have been very wonderful for both of them; for it is doubtful if either M‘Crae or Eva had ever shared an intimacy of this kind. In it there was no hint of love-making. The extraordinary candour of their relation made impossible the bashfulness and misunderstanding out of which love-making so often springs. The difference of age between them made it unlikely that Eva should think of M‘Crae as a lover; and he was not a young man in whom the mere physical presence of a woman would awaken passion. Many years ago he had outgrown that sort of thing; so that the result of their intimacy was a wholly delightful relation, which resembled, in its frankness and freedom from the subconscious posings of sex, the friendship of two men or of a man and a woman happily married who have rid themselves of the first restlessness of passion. To Eva it seemed that this state of innocence might last for ever. To M‘Crae, who knew the workings of the human heart more widely, it seemed very beautiful, and very like her, that she should think so.
But if Eva realised no threat to their peace of mind in the shape of passion, she was certainly conscious of other dangers to their secret happiness. She knew that the day must come when the presence of M‘Crae would be revealed to James, who seemed, for the time, to have got the better of the fever in his blood. She dreaded this because she knew that when it came to that she must almost certainly lose M‘Crae; and the presence of M‘Crae had made her happier than she had ever been before at Luguru. James wouldn’t understand their position. She could be sure of that in advance. To say that James wasn’t capable of relieving her of the attentions of Godovius would not help matters much, for James had a good opinion of himself in the rôle of the protecting male. The idea that his place should be taken by a one-armed elephant-hunter of the most doubtful antecedents, who had stolen into his house in the night while he lay sick with fever, would not appeal to him. Indeed, there was bound to be trouble with James.