She did not recognise him until her machine came abreast of him. She had been unprepared for the encounter, not knowing that he was in Cape Town, and when she met his glance she flushed hotly, and losing control of her machine, swerved violently to one side. Bolitho swerved after her, but she righted herself dexterously, and smiled into his anxious face. "I'm getting off, Teddy," she said. "Don't wait for me. I'll probably overtake you,--at any rate, I shan't be far behind... Ride on, please." He nodded, and only dimly understanding, and greatly troubled in mind, kept on his course, while Julie slowed down her machine and alighted, and waited for Lawless to come up. "You!" she cried, and held out her hand to him in glad surprise. He took the hand, pressed it warmly, and relieved her of the charge of the cycle--the same old well-worn cycle he had wheeled for her before. "I didn't know you were back in town," she said, walking along beside him with flushed, glad young face and smiling eyes. "You've come--to stay?" "For a few days only," he replied... "I've spent three of them already. I began to fear I should miss seeing you." "Oh!" she said, and gasped with consternation at the mere thought. "I wish I'd known..." "I've been past the house a few times," he said. "And I never saw you! ... It was nice of you to take the trouble," she added, blushing. "When a man counts his friends on the fingers of one hand--and then has fingers to spare," he returned, looking into her eyes with a grave smile, "he can't afford to overlook the truest of them." "Not the truest," she contradicted quickly, her thoughts unconsciously reverting to a scene she was little likely to forget, when a woman with beautiful tear-filled eyes held in her hands a portrait of this man, and spoke of her wasted youth. Julie turned her face away from his and looked along the sunlit road. She was wondering whether she could find the courage to tell him what she knew. It was so difficult to talk to one towards whom, perhaps on account of his reserve, she had always felt a certain shyness, of such private and intimate things. "No!" he said quietly.--"A very true friend, then... And one I value highly,--perhaps because I know that I have her regard quite independently of any merit. A man doesn't prize his fair-weather friends; it's the friends of his adversity he holds dear." "There is someone," Julie began, and hesitated, and then gathered fresh courage and essayed again... "There is someone who--if you would let her--would be the best friend you ever had... I don't understand why you won't see it,--there are many things about you I fail to understand. And I'm horribly afraid I'm going to annoy you. It's so impertinent to interfere in other people's lives." "It's an impertinence a great many people are guilty of," he returned... "I don't fancy, myself, it ever does much good." "You aren't going to be very severe with me, are you?" she pleaded.