"Unless?" prompted Pamela. She was faintly amused with the halting recital which showed a tendency to break off at the most interesting points. She glanced at him with a laugh in her eyes, and repeated encouragingly: "Unless?" "Well, the answer is fairly obvious," he replied, smiling too. "Do you want me to go on?" "No," she said, and flushed and looked away again, but the laughter was still in her eyes. "I think I can imagine the rest." "It shouldn't require a great mental strain," he returned. "If you amuse yourself in that fashion," Pamela remarked, "what a lot of exciting adventures you can contrive." "Make-believe adventures of that nature aren't exciting," he said. "They're the last word in dulness really,--the substitute for the real thing. Sitting talking with you here is infinitely pleasanter than weaving impossible romances. Certainly, when one is stage-managing, one can have things all one's own way; but it's a bloodless form of amusement." "Do you still visit Port Elizabeth--for the tennis tournament?" she asked. "No; that defeat of mine sickened me. I've done with competing. It's the younger men's turn now." Pamela looked amused. "You are very easily discouraged," she said. "I don't think I altogether admire that easy acquiescence in failure: it's not a British characteristic." "Perhaps not," he allowed. "But when one has suffered the knock-out blow it's idiotic to enter the ring again." At this junction Pamela's little girl, eluding her coloured nurse, ran across the lawn towards her mother, having espied the tea-table from afar. In her eagerness for cake she overlooked the stranger, until abruptly made aware of his presence as she hurled her plump body into Pamela's arms. The sight of the strange man sobered her gladness with surprising suddenness. The bright head dropped swiftly, and the flushed, shy little face buried itself in Pamela's dress. Dare smiled. There was no doubt as to the child's identity; Pamela the second was Pamela the first in miniature. "Somebody's come for cake," said Pamela, and tried to lift the hidden face from its resting place; but the child resisted her attempts. "And somebody's got a nasty shock," Dare added, as he cut a slice of the most tempting dainty on the table and held it out invitingly. "Won't you come and make friends?" But Pamela the second merely peeped at him like a shy, inquisitive bird, and nestled closer in the sheltering arms. Experience, in the form of her father, had led her to be distrustful of men. "See, Pamela," coaxed her mother; "Mr Dare has a beautiful slice of cake for you. See!" "Don't want it," Pamela pouted. "But that's rude," remarked Pamela the first. "You mustn't be naughty."