Chapter Three.

The following afternoon Dare called upon Pamela, and was glad to find her at home and alone. He was returning the next day to Johannesburg, he explained, and was not likely to be in Cape Town again for some time.

Pamela entertained him in the garden, and gave him tea under the trees on the lawn. She expressed regret for her husband’s absence: he had motored into town, and would not be home before seven.

“He will be so sorry to miss you,” she said. “You had better stay and dine with us.”

He thanked her, but declined the invitation, pleading a prior engagement. The absence of Arnott occurred to him as rather an agreeable accident; Mrs Arnott’s sole company was sufficient for his enjoyment.

She chatted inconsequently while she poured out the tea, and he watched her, and admired again, as he had admired on the previous night, the sweet expression of her face, her air of joyous youth. In the daylight she was less radiantly pretty than she had appeared by artificial light; possibly, he decided, evening dress was more becoming to her than day-wear; but she was fair enough in any guise to excite admiration. Dare would have admired her sweet expression had she been otherwise plain of feature; it was in his opinion beautiful of itself.

“Do you know, I’ve seen you before last night,” he said, as he stirred his tea, and contemplated her gravely across the little table that was drawn up beside her chair.

“Seen me before?” she repeated, surprised. “Where?”

“Were you ever in Port Elizabeth?” he asked.

“Yes, of course. I was teaching there. But that was five years ago.”

“I saw you there,” he answered,—“five years ago.”

Pamela’s blue eyes opened wide. She scrutinised him closely, and shook her head.

“I don’t remember,” she said.

“You wouldn’t,” he replied. He helped himself to cake, and resumed in a careless manner: “It was at a tennis tournament. You were in the stand, and I was playing in the men’s singles.”

“Did you win?” she asked.

He smiled.

“No; I played rottenly. I came in defeated, and sat in the stand near you.”

“If you had won,” she said, “I might possibly have noticed you.”

“It would be kinder,” he said, “if you spared defeat a few of your glances. You shook hands with the winner.”

“How horrid of me!” she cried.

“Oh! well, he was a P.E. man. I expect you were pleased he carried off the honours. I had to go back immediately; I went by the night train. Soon afterwards I was back in Port Elizabeth. I didn’t see you on that occasion.”

Pamela looked away from him, and gazed thoughtfully above the trees at the mountain which towered high above them, blue in the afternoon sunlight, with dark purple shadows in its cleft sides that deepened into black.

“I married just about that time,” she said.

“So I heard.”

She glanced at him curiously.

“You seem to have known quite a lot about me,” she said. “It’s funny hearing all this now.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “Odd to have run up against you like this! I knew you again at once.”

“You have a good memory for faces,” she observed. “I feel I ought to have recognised you.”

“Ah! but I was defeated,” he reminded her smilingly,—“defeated all round. And there was no reason why you should have noticed a stranger particularly. They were pretty well all strange faces to me, you see; and I was amusing myself by picking out a few. It’s a habit of mine. I fix on a face and construct a story in connection with it.”

“Did you construct a story about me?”

“I forget,” he returned evasively. “Quite possibly I did... But it was entirely wrong, anyway. When a man constructs a story in connection with a girl’s face, he doesn’t provide her with a lover, unless—”

“Unless?” prompted Pamela. She was faintly amused with the halting recital which showed a tendency to break off at the most interesting points. She glanced at him with a laugh in her eyes, and repeated encouragingly: “Unless?”

“Well, the answer is fairly obvious,” he replied, smiling too. “Do you want me to go on?”

“No,” she said, and flushed and looked away again, but the laughter was still in her eyes. “I think I can imagine the rest.”

“It shouldn’t require a great mental strain,” he returned.

“If you amuse yourself in that fashion,” Pamela remarked, “what a lot of exciting adventures you can contrive.”

“Make-believe adventures of that nature aren’t exciting,” he said. “They’re the last word in dulness really,—the substitute for the real thing. Sitting talking with you here is infinitely pleasanter than weaving impossible romances. Certainly, when one is stage-managing, one can have things all one’s own way; but it’s a bloodless form of amusement.”

“Do you still visit Port Elizabeth—for the tennis tournament?” she asked.

“No; that defeat of mine sickened me. I’ve done with competing. It’s the younger men’s turn now.”

Pamela looked amused.

“You are very easily discouraged,” she said. “I don’t think I altogether admire that easy acquiescence in failure: it’s not a British characteristic.”

“Perhaps not,” he allowed. “But when one has suffered the knock-out blow it’s idiotic to enter the ring again.”

At this junction Pamela’s little girl, eluding her coloured nurse, ran across the lawn towards her mother, having espied the tea-table from afar. In her eagerness for cake she overlooked the stranger, until abruptly made aware of his presence as she hurled her plump body into Pamela’s arms. The sight of the strange man sobered her gladness with surprising