Dare gathered from the fragmentary talk that Arnott was to be a semi-imbecile, just able to crawl about,--a reversion, in short, to childhood with the hideous defects of decrepit age to make the reversion more horrible. The information turned him sick. He was thankful to leave the place and get out again into the sunshine. He no longer desired to see Arnott. To reason with a man in that condition was impossible. Arnott had become a mere cipher in the drama, the finishing act of which had to be decided between Pamela and himself. It was unthinkable that she should persist in devoting the future to his wreck of humanity, to whom she owed no debt of duty, who had merely used her for his pleasure, and discarded her when he tired through his infatuation for a younger woman, which obsession possibly his failing mental faculties were responsible for. Dare left Pretoria the same day, and started on the long return journey to the coast. He was impatient to see Pamela, and at the same time extremely nervous at the prospect of his interview with her. He did not know what to say to her, how to break to her the brutal fact of Arnott's contemplated marriage, his determined and ruthless desertion of herself. The man's actions, before his illness prevented the carrying out of his designs, pointed conclusively to a deranged intellect. With the cunning of latent insanity he had arranged his plans, counting on Pamela's silence in respect to his bigamous marriage with her, utterly regardless of the stir which the scandal of his marriage with Blanche must create in circles where he was known to have a wife and children already. To a man in full possession of his faculties the impossibility of concealing the crime of bigamy would have been apparent, unless he fled the country and married under an assumed name. What, he wondered, would Pamela decide upon doing when she learnt the entire truth? He could not tell. The uncertainty was nerve-racking. He fretted and worried himself with conjectures all through that tedious, seemingly unending journey,--during the hot dusty days as the train rushed through the Karroo, and throughout the long sleepless nights when, kept awake by his thoughts, he turned in weary discomfort in his narrow berth in the darkened compartment, and longed for the coming of day. When he reached the terminus he despatched a telegram to Pamela to inform her of his arrival, and his intention of calling upon her the following morning. Then he took a taxi and drove to the Mount Nelson. He dined and went to bed, and slept soundly for the first time since leaving Pretoria.