He recalled how every day since he had been in Wynberg he had seen her on some pretext or other: they had aided one another in the invention of trivial reasons for meeting. He had not always had her to himself as now: sometimes she had the children with her; on occasions Arnott was present. Arnott always seemed glad when Dare came in; he contrived generally to monopolise the conversation, and was manifestly entirely unaware of Dare's preference for his wife's society. It simply did not occur to him. His friends always admired Pamela; he was never jealous, perhaps because he felt so certain that this woman who had cleaved to him in defiance of her principles of honour, would cleave to him always. Although he was conscious of a waning of his own passion, it did not strike him that any change in himself could possibly weaken her love. He felt absolutely sure of her. Pamela had been sewing before Dare joined her. When he sauntered across the lawn and drew up beside her chair, she dropped the work into her lap and gave him her undivided attention. "You've brought the book," she said, and took it from him with a pleased smile. "I rather wondered if you would come to-day." "Didn't you feel fairly certain I would?" he asked, and fetched a chair for himself, which he placed close to hers, facing her. He seated himself. Pamela did not answer his question. She opened the book and turned its pages idly. It was a beautifully bound volume of "Paolo and Francesca." He had wished her to read it. But she understood quite well that the poem was a secondary matter; the bringing it to her was the primary motive. "I am glad to have this," she said. "I think I shall like it. The outside is beautiful, anyway." "So is the inside," he answered. "But it is a bit on the tragic side. You mustn't look for the happy ending." "No," replied Pamela gravely. She put the book down and gazed beyond him at the sunshine that lay warmly on the garden, the golden mantle of gaiety which mocks the sadness of the world. "Life isn't all happy ending, is it?" "For many of us, no," he allowed. "I think the really happy people," observed Pamela, wrinkling her brows while she pursued her reflections, "are the people who feel least." "You mean," he said, watching her, "the people who never love?" "I didn't mean that exactly... And yet, in a way, I suppose I did. I meant the people of moderate passions,--self-disciplined people whose emotions are under control, whose minds are like a well ordered establishment in which nothing is ever out of place. They don't admit disturbing elements, and so their lives run on in an even content. There are no big joys and no big sorrows. I have known several women like that. They suggest twilight somehow,--never the sunlight, and never blank darkness. They are restful." "I prefer the glowing beauty of vivid contrasts myself," he said. "A world in which there is only twilight would be a prison house."