She chatted inconsequently while she poured out the tea, and he watched her, and admired again, as he had admired on the previous night, the sweet expression of her face, her air of joyous youth. In the daylight she was less radiantly pretty than she had appeared by artificial light; possibly, he decided, evening dress was more becoming to her than day-wear; but she was fair enough in any guise to excite admiration. Dare would have admired her sweet expression had she been otherwise plain of feature; it was in his opinion beautiful of itself. "Do you know, I've seen you before last night," he said, as he stirred his tea, and contemplated her gravely across the little table that was drawn up beside her chair. "Seen me before?" she repeated, surprised. "Where?" "Were you ever in Port Elizabeth?" he asked. "Yes, of course. I was teaching there. But that was five years ago." "I saw you there," he answered,--"five years ago." Pamela's blue eyes opened wide. She scrutinised him closely, and shook her head. "I don't remember," she said. "You wouldn't," he replied. He helped himself to cake, and resumed in a careless manner: "It was at a tennis tournament. You were in the stand, and I was playing in the men's singles." "Did you win?" she asked. He smiled. "No; I played rottenly. I came in defeated, and sat in the stand near you." "If you had won," she said, "I might possibly have noticed you." "It would be kinder," he said, "if you spared defeat a few of your glances. You shook hands with the winner." "How horrid of me!" she cried. "Oh! well, he was a P.E. man. I expect you were pleased he carried off the honours. I had to go back immediately; I went by the night train. Soon afterwards I was back in Port Elizabeth. I didn't see you on that occasion." Pamela looked away from him, and gazed thoughtfully above the trees at the mountain which towered high above them, blue in the afternoon sunlight, with dark purple shadows in its cleft sides that deepened into black. "I married just about that time," she said. "So I heard." She glanced at him curiously. "You seem to have known quite a lot about me," she said. "It's funny hearing all this now." "Yes," he agreed. "Odd to have run up against you like this! I knew you again at once." "You have a good memory for faces," she observed. "I feel I ought to have recognised you." "Ah! but I was defeated," he reminded her smilingly,--"defeated all round. And there was no reason why you should have noticed a stranger particularly. They were pretty well all strange faces to me, you see; and I was amusing myself by picking out a few. It's a habit of mine. I fix on a face and construct a story in connection with it." "Did you construct a story about me?" "I forget," he returned evasively. "Quite possibly I did... But it was entirely wrong, anyway. When a man constructs a story in connection with a girl's face, he doesn't provide her with a lover, unless--"