She tilted her head sideways to see, beyond her knee, on what his eyes were fixed. She tossed her foot clear of the muslin flounces, and then with a curious twist of the ankle brought it round into her view. "What's wrong with it?" she asked. He shook his head. "How should I know?" he said thoughtfully. "It wasn't made for me." She laughed, slowly twirling her foot, as though fascinated by its suppleness, or by the gleaming creases of the silk that covered it. Then, with a little jerk of her knee, she let it settle again into the froth of flounces. "Really," she said, "for a man who says so little, you do say the strangest things." His eyes had wandered again to the square of open air, the picture in azure and ochre and emerald which the window made in the wall. The brown woman still sat swinging her bead in the shade of the chenar. Terrington could see its glassy blueness as it dipped to and fro across a splinter of sunlight. Rose Chantry, with her eyes on his profile, asked him at what he was looking. He told her. "I know!" she exclaimed. "Why is she always doing that?" "She wants a child," he said. "But she has one." "Another then." She gave a shudder. "What strange things women are!" she cried. His eyes came round to her, and she felt a coldness in them like the green gleam of ice. "Out here, you see," he said quietly, "women are still as fond of making men as of making fools of them." "Why do you say that?" she asked sharply. "I could think of nothing better," he replied. "Why did you say it to _me_?" she persisted. "To whom else could I have said it?" he enquired blandly. The blaze of anger seemed to fill her eyes with a floating sparkle of fresh colours, and her lips closed tightly, as though to repress a desire to bite him. Then she met his glance and laughed. "I wonder why you dislike me so," she said. "I don't dislike you," he replied. "Oh, well!" she sighed, "why don't you dislike me, then; since you seem too? You wish I wasn't here!" "Very much," he admitted. "Why? What harm do I do?" "Haven't you told me that this morning?" "No!" she cried. "You weren't thinking of that; you know you weren't. You believe that would have happened anyhow. It was what you meant about making fools of men." "Well," he said, "don't you make fools of them?" She shook her head softly. "My mistake then," he said. "Ah!" she sighed, "but you don't think so. I daresay you think something much more horrid of me than you care to say. And it ought to have been rather nice for you all, having me up here." "Yes," he said, "I think it ought." She looked at him doubtfully, crumpling her lips together in her fingers. "But you _do_ make mistakes," she went on retrospectively. "Yes," he said, "one makes everything of them." She regarded him for a moment in the light of the remark, before adding: "You told me, the first time you saw me, I must give up riding."