"I think," she said presently, looking at him a little uncertainly, "it would be easier to explain things personally,--easier than writing. I think perhaps it would be best to go. You think that, don't you?" "Yes," he answered. "If you are going through with the thing, it's no good jibbing at obstacles. When you have made up your mind I'll see about tickets, and make all arrangements for the journey." "You are going with me?" she asked. "Of course," he answered. "You don't suppose I would allow you to go alone? I'm seeing you through to the finish." She looked at him with grateful eyes. "I am so dreading this," she said. "I don't know how I should manage alone. I'm growing altogether to depend on you. It isn't fair to you." But Dare would not allow this. "It's the one return you can make me," he insisted,--"if there is any return called for. I am glad to be of any little service to you." To be of service to her was the only thing left him. This journey which he proposed making with her was the last opportunity, he supposed, that he would have of enjoying her society; the end of the journey meant the parting of the ways for them. He had no idea how the prospect of the future appealed to her, but for him it held little in the way of hope or interest. He would go on with his work, and get what satisfaction he could out of that,--it offered scope, and interest of one sort. Had she consented to marry him he would have retired and gone home; there was no necessity for him to follow his profession; but without her, work became a necessity of itself. Too much leisure would only conduce to thought. He supposed that in time he would become reconciled to his disappointment; but for the present he could only realise the bitterness of the loss of a happiness which fate had seemed to place within his grasp, and had then wrested from him again with wanton caprice. He still held to it that Pamela was wrong in her decision; but while he could not persuade her into recognising her mistake, he was obliged to acquiesce in it. In his brain there lingered a faint hope that the journey to Pretoria would accomplish what he had failed to do,--that the meeting with Arnott would convince her of the impossibility of reuniting their severed lives. Since it was a matter of principle only with her, against which her nature revolted, he did not feel that there was any disloyalty in desiring her defeat. It would be best for her in the long run, and her good mattered to him equally with his own.