‘Not necessarily,’ I said. She looked at me with interest, as if I had contributed importantly to the matter in hand, and resumed tapping her boot with her riding-crop. We talked of indifferent things and had long lapses. At the close of one effort Dora threw herself back with a deep, tumultuous sigh. ‘The poverty of this little wretched resort ties up one’s tongue!’ she cried. ‘It is the bottom of the cup; here one gets the very dregs of Simla’s commonplace. Let us climb out of it.’ I thought for a moment that Ronald had been too much for her nerves coming down, and offered to change saddles, but she would not. We took it out of the horses all along the first upward slopes, and as we pulled in to breathe them she turned to me paler than ever. ‘I feel better now,’ she said. For myself I had got rid of Armour for the afternoon. I think my irritation with him about his pony rose and delivered me from the too insistent thought of him. With Dora it was otherwise; she had dismissed him; but he had never left her for a moment the whole long afternoon. She flung a searching look at me. With a reckless turn of her head, she said, ‘Why didn’t we take him with us?’ ‘Did we want him?’ I asked. ‘I think I always want him.’ ‘Ah!’ said I, and would have pondered this statement at some length in silence, but that she plainly did not wish me to do so. ‘We might perfectly well have sent his pony home with one of our own servants--he would have been delighted to walk down.’ ‘He wasn’t in proper kit,’ I remonstrated. ‘Oh, I wish you would speak to him about that. Make him get some tennis-flannels and riding-things.’ ‘Do you propose to get him asked to places?’ I inquired. She gave me a charmingly unguarded smile. ‘I propose to induce you to do so. I have done what I could. He has dined with us several times, and met a few people who would, I thought, be kind to him.’ ‘Oh, well,’ I said, ‘I have had him at the Club too, with old Lamb and Colonel Hamilton. He made us all miserable with his shyness. Don’t ask me to do it again, please.’ ‘I’ve sent him to call on certain people,’ Dora continued, ‘and I’ve shown his pictures to everybody, and praised him and talked about him, but I can’t go on doing that indefinitely, can I?’ ‘No,’ I said; ‘people might misunderstand.’ ‘I don’t think they would MISunderstand,’ replied this astonishing girl, without flinching. She even sought my eyes to show me that hers were clear and full of purpose. ‘Good God!’ I said to myself, but the words that fell from me were, ‘He is outside all that life.’ ‘What is the use of living a life that he is outside of?’ ‘Oh, if you put it that way,’ I said, and set my teeth, ‘I will do what I can.’ She held out her hand with an affectionate gesture, and I was reluctantly compelled to press it. The horses broke into a trot, and we talked no more of Armour, or of anything, until Ted Harris joined us on the Mall.