"That's the part that shows," he returned. "It has cost more than that." She was silent for a while, gazing from the window as she leaned back in her seat Dare had bought some pineapples at De Aar that the natives were selling on the platform, and he cut one of the fruit in half, and gave it to her with a spoon, that being, he assured her, the only way in which a pineapple should be eaten. "If I had come alone," Pamela said, "I should have fared badly." "You couldn't have made this journey alone," he said decidedly. "It's unthinkable." The wind was rising steadily, a hot wind, that stirred the sticky red sand and carried it in clouds towards them till it covered everything. Whirlpools of red dust, rising skyward like tongues of furiously swirling flame, travelled with extraordinary velocity along the ground. There were farms here too, and cultivated patches of grain, and more lean sheep; and at infrequent intervals, marking a spot of beauty in this sterile waste, grew low, spiky, darkly green bushes starred with white blossom resembling cherry blossom, and straggling clumps of the prickly pear. "And people live on these lonely farms," Pamela said. "I wonder what their lives are like? Think of it, day after day--only this." "Fairly dull," Dare commented. "But it's extraordinary how little they regard it. I've stayed on some of these Karroo farms. It isn't half bad." "As an experience, perhaps not... But to live there!" "There are conditions," he returned, "in which such isolation might be agreeable." "They would be quite extraordinary conditions," she rejoined. "Most of those people are probably ordinary folk with ordinary feelings. I can't imagine it myself. It appears to me depressingly monotonous. How tired they must grow of one another." He looked amused. "It is possible to attain to that state of boredom even in big centres," he argued. "Well, yes, of course. But there are distractions. One isn't so entirely dependent on one another." "That's the strongest argument in favour of these cut off places," he returned. "Such absolute dependence must develop qualities of kindliness and toleration which would encourage the companionable spirit. I don't think it would irk me under the right conditions. The heart of the Karroo would be heaven with the right person to share one's life." "I suppose any exile might be acceptable in that case," Pamela said, gravely returning his look. "But I don't fancy it happens often in life that the right people come together." "That is sometimes their own fault," he answered quietly. He leaned suddenly towards her, and took and held her hand. "We are in a fair way to commit that blunder, Pamela. We are stumbling forward, following blindly the leading of a blind fate, and cutting the ground behind us, closing every retreat. I'm gripped with a conviction at times that we are acting foolishly,--that afterwards we shall regret."