"What is there to cause talk?" he inquired, feeling oddly irritated at her persistent opposition. "Well, your devotion isn't exactly normal." "Normal?" he said. "Usual, if you prefer it," she conceded. "It's practically the same thing. Disinterested service is a virtue ordinary human intelligence cannot grasp." "That is, perhaps, less the fault of human intelligence," he returned, "than the misuse of service." "No doubt," she allowed. "Nevertheless, we suffer vicariously through that same misuse. But it's no good talking. You have made up your mind. If it wasn't for how you feel about her the thing wouldn't be so outrageous; but under the circumstances..." She broke off and looked at him with perplexed, baffled eyes. Dare realised dimly what a puzzle and a disappointment he had become to her. She had at one time, he was aware, regarded herself as an influence in his life. He almost smiled at the thought Influences are only powerful so long as one is satisfied to submit to them; with the first sign of breaking away, control ends. "I'll bring her to the station and see you off, anyway," she finished. "That will," he assured her, smiling openly now, "add an air of immense respectability to the adventure." The arrival of the little Arnotts, with their nurse, a considerable amount of luggage, and numerous toys, gave Mrs Carruthers something else to think of, and detached her mind successfully from Dare and his misplaced affections. She had suggested that the children should come to her the day before Pamela left in order to see how the plan worked, and also with the object of allowing their mother leisure in which to make her own hurried preparations for the journey. When Carruthers got back that evening he found them already installed in his home; and his wife, who, in making her arrangements, had not consulted him, was reminded at sight of his amazed face that what she regarded in the light of an agreeable duty he might view altogether differently. "I believe I actually forgot that I possessed a husband," she said. She regarded him for a second with bright, amused eyes. "They've come to stay," she announced. "I've adopted them-- indefinitely." Carruthers demanded an explanation, and emitted a low dismayed whistle when he learnt that their mother was going to Pretoria and might be away some weeks. "But she hasn't gone already?" he said, collapsing into a chair on the stoep, and reluctantly submitting to having his foot used for the unnatural purpose of equestrian exercise by Pamela's small son, who with his sister was enjoying amazingly this unexpected change of residence. "No. But I thought it advisable to have them on trial before she left. They go to-morrow." "They!" Carruthers ejaculated. "George is going with her," she explained, with a smiling shrug of her shoulders. She watched the children, who were sprawling all over her husband to his manifest discomfort, and, surveying the grouping, laughed.