Now, as he sat there, dreamily cracking almonds, he began to regret his reticence. The very turn of the conversation favoured him. He might have volunteered considerable information for the benefit of the man who was going up-country, he suspected, for the first time. The conversation would have become general, and might have paved the way to an acquaintanceship. There was no necessity for him to have been so reticent. He had lived too long stowed away, he decided. It was high time he came out of his shell. He had applied for and obtained his leave, and had come down there to spend it. The sea breezes blowing across the isthmus of the Cape Peninsula, the cool leafiness of the lovely suburbs, were as a very tonic after the hot, steamy, tropical glow of his remote home. But the effects of the fever, combined with a natural reserve, kept him from going much among people, and most of his time was spent alone. "I wonder who that man is who sat at our table," Nidia Commerell was saying; for the trio were seated outside trying to converse amid the cackle and din of one of the livelier parties before referred to. "He looked awfully gloomy," said Mrs Bateman. "Did you think so, Susie? Now, I thought he looked nice. Perhaps he wasn't feeling well." "He had a look that way, too," said Moseley. "Up-country man perhaps. Down here to throw off a touch of fever. I've seen them before." "Poor fellow! That may have accounted for it," said Nidia. "Yes; he's quite nice-looking." John Ames, meanwhile, was smoking a solitary pipe on the balcony in front of his room, and his thoughts continued to run on this new--and to him, supremely foolish subject. Then he pulled himself together. He would get on his bicycle and roll down to Muizenberg for a whiff of the briny. The afternoon was cloudless and still, and the spin along a smooth and, for the most part, level road exhilarating. A brisk stroll on the beach, the rollers tumbling lazily in, and he had brought his mind to other things--the affairs of his district, and whether the other man who was temporarily filling his place would be likely to make a mess of them or not, and how he would pull with Inglefield--whether Madula had recovered from the sulky mood into which the action of Nanzicele had thrown him--and half a hundred matters of the sort. And so, having re-mounted his wheel, and being about halfway homeward again, he could own himself clear of the foolish vein in which he had set out, when-- there whirled round the bend in the road two bicycles, the riders whereof were of the ornamental sex; in fact, the very two upon one of whom his thoughts had been chaotically running. One quick glance from Nidia Commerell's blue eyes as they shot by, and John Ames was thrown right back into all that futile vein of meditation which he had only just succeeded in putting behind him. The offender, meanwhile, was delivering herself on the subject of him to her companion in no uncertain terms.