"It's odd," she said, and laughed. "I am going to adopt your view. If you have known me for five years, it stands to reason that I must have known you too. Good-bye. Be sure to look us up when you come this way again." He looked into her eyes with a protracted, earnest gaze, and hesitated. "I don't know when that will be," he answered slowly. "I don't anticipate coming this way again for some while. When I do, you may be very sure of one thing,--that I shall look you up." Pamela went back to her seat under the trees, and thought about him for the rest of the afternoon. There was something--she could not define it satisfactorily--in the man's personality that attracted her: she had never met any one before with whom she had felt so quickly at home. He was companionable and sympathetic. The odd mixture of serio-comic in his conversation left her slightly in doubt as to the entire sincerity of all he said; but this only further piqued her interest. It was possible to imagine him clothing in flippant language his deepest feelings with a view to disguising their earnestness. She could not conceive him ever betraying emotion. Abruptly she roused herself with a laugh, and consulted the watch at her wrist. "Seven o'clock!" she mused. "A nice thing for a married woman to devote nearly two hours in a sentimental reverie about a stranger!" She went indoors to change her dress. Arnott returned while she was upstairs. She heard him go to his dressing-room, and after a while he crossed the landing to her room, hesitated at the door, and finally entered. She observed that he was looking worried again. He appeared excited and irritable, and a restlessness most unusual in him kept him constantly on the move. He fingered things on the dressing-table, and brushed aside impatiently any article that came in his way. Pamela wondered what it was that worried him so of late, but she did not like to question him. This worry harassed him usually on mail days. She was beginning to connect the trouble with his English letters. But for the fact that he never showed any anxiety with regard to their expenses, she would have concluded that he was financially embarrassed. But not once had he suggested to her that it would be wise to practise economy. He was, as a matter of fact, far more extravagant than she was. He spent money with the careless indifference of a man whose banking account more than sufficed for his needs. "Mr Dare called this afternoon," remarked Pamela, watching her husband as he fidgeted at her dressing-table. "He leaves Cape Town to-morrow. I thought you might like to see him, so I asked him to dine." He faced round abruptly and stared at her, frowning and displeased. "He isn't coming," she added, meeting his vexed gaze, and feeling for the first time glad that Dare had refused the invitation. "He was engaged for to-night."