He had meant an allusion to her situation as bad third to her uxorious parents; before his mind's eye has risen a picture of the little forlorn shawled figure he had seen studying its Italian Grammar with the door shut upon its loneliness; but almost before the words have left his lips, he sees of how different, of how cruel, a construction they may be capable. He snatches a glance of real terror at her, to see whether she has made that erroneous, yet all too plausible application--a glance which confirms his worst fears. She has turned as white as the pocket-handkerchief which she is passing over her trembling lips. "Yes," she says in a hollow whisper; "you are right. In my position it _is_ unavoidable, and it is cowardly of me not to accept it as such." "I mean"--he cries desperately--"I only meant--I mean----" But she does not suffer him to finish his stuttered explanation. "It is cold," she says, rising. "I will go home." He does not attempt to accompany or follow her. After she is gone, he rages about the garden, and passes beyond it to where--still sunlight-smitten--the blue Mediterranean is breaking in joyous foam. He sits down on the shelly strand, and, in futile anger, hurls back the wet pebbles into the sea's azure lap. Away to the left, the three-cornered town swarms candescent up the hill, and the white lighthouse stands out against the lapis-coloured air. How sharp-cut and intense it all is!--none of our dear undecided grays. Here, if you are not piercing blue, you are dazzling white or profound green. There is, indeed, something less sharp-cut and uncompromising--a something more of mystery in the glory that--bright, too, but not making its full revelation--envelopes the long hill range that, ending in Cape Matifou, stretches away to the far right. Round the corner, to the right too, a party of Arabs, sitting sideways on little donkeys, white draped, with their _haik_-swathed heads, are disappearing on their small beasts in the clear air. It is like a page out of the Bible--a flight into Egypt--and they are going towards Egypt too. Jim's eye follows the placid Easterns, but without catching the infection of their tranquillity. "Whenever I see her, I stick a knife into her! It is impossible! There is no use trying! I will give up the attempt. It is out of the question to have any happy relations with a woman who has a past!" * * * * * After all, Mr. Le Marchant does not like Hammam Rhira. He thinks the hotel cold and the roads bad. Jim overhears him telling someone this, and his own heart leaps. It is true that he takes it to task for doing so. Perhaps, after all, Elizabeth's removal would have been the best solution of his problem. Had she left Algiers, he could scarcely have followed her, and she would have been freed from the chance of his clumsy stabs.