He was a tall man in the early thirties, rather thin, with a clever face, and light keen, extraordinarily penetrating eyes. By profession he was a mining engineer, and Arnott had described him as a particularly smart man at his job. He had met him in Cape Town before his marriage, and had run across him again that day unexpectedly after the lapse of years. The invitation to dinner had been prompted by impulse; he had no particular feeling of friendship for the man. Dare, who was often in Cape Town, was acquainted with some of the guests present. The Carruthers, who were neighbours of the Arnotts, and with whom Pamela was on terms of greater intimacy than with the majority of her large circle of friends, had known him for years. Mrs Carruthers had once thought of marrying him before she met Carruthers, misled by a certain deferential kindliness he displayed towards all women, being naturally fond of the sex, into thinking he cared for her. She still flirted mildly with him on the occasions when they met; but she had grown out of the belief that her marriage mattered to him. "I didn't expect to see you here," she remarked, when he sought her out after dinner and suggested a stroll in the grounds. "I did not think you knew the Arnotts." "I knew Arnott years ago, before he was married," he answered. "Then you haven't met her before? ... They've been married five years." "So long ago as that, was it?" he observed meditatively. "She is very sweet looking." "Yes; she is pretty," Mrs Carruthers allowed. "They are the most devoted couple in the Peninsula." "What's amiss between you and Dick?" he asked. "Oh!" she laughed. "I never worshipped Dickie quite so blindly as that. The Arnotts' is the only case of perennial courtship I've ever been privileged to witness... But after all five years is but a step of the journey." "I should think a man could continue in love indefinitely with a woman like Mrs Arnott," he remarked. "If time stood still for her, perhaps," she conceded. "But she won't always be pretty." "She will always be sweet," he returned. "I don't set great store by looks myself. But I like a woman to be amiable; and a sweet expression suggests a sweet disposition." "It may suggest it; it doesn't necessarily prove that it's there." "Leave me a few of my pleasant beliefs," he pleaded. "It's an old-fashioned notion, but I like to think that the world is a good place, and human nature on the whole inclined to charity. It's a much more comfortable theory than the deliberately cultivated scepticism towards the disinterestedness of human motives. I like to think that what looks sweet, is sweet; just as I like to believe that when a woman is kind to me it is because she feels kindly. That is why I always enjoy being with you." "By which subtle flattery you force me to sheathe my claws, and make an effort towards being amiable. You haven't altered much."