As she felt again in imagination the close pressure of his lips upon hers, the grip of his arms, which had hurt her, frightened her, and yet given her a thrill of sensuous pleasure, she turned her face to the pillow and pressed her mouth against its coolness and cried weakly. How dared he kiss her like that? ... How dared he endeavour to make her love him when he could never be anything closer in her life than at present? It was cruel and mean of him... Yet, despite her realisation of his baseness, she could not hate the man. Already he had succeeded beyond his expectation in rousing in her a hungry craving for him, which, if he persisted in his selfish persecution, could only end disastrously for her. And he had no intention to desist. The game which he had started idly for his own amusement was becoming absorbingly interesting. That was how he regarded the affair. In his ungenerous pursuit of amusement he lost sight of the girl's youth, of her helpless position in his household, exposed to the evil influence of his attentions, and unable to protect herself save by giving up her post, which he was comfortably assured from the moment she suffered his caresses she would not have the strength of mind to do. He was not in love with her. He was merely gratifying a sensual impulse to take advantage of the moment. It seemed absurd, he told himself, to have a girl, eager for initiation, at hand and refrain from using the opportunity. She could stop him if she chose. When she broke away from him on the landing, he went downstairs and returned quietly to his seat on the stoep. Pamela was still singing. She ceased presently, and closed the piano and joined him. "I believe you were asleep," she said, and perched herself on his knee. His eyes flashed open instantly. He had been leaning back with them closed, lost in a comfortable reverie; her unexpected action startled him into sudden alertness. "Something very near it," he admitted. "I believe, myself, I've been dreaming." "Pleasant dreams?" she demanded. He took her chin in his hand. "Confused," he answered. "I'm not fully awake now... Am I an old fogey, Pam?" "No," she replied, smiling. "But you are not exactly a boy." "Not a dashing hero," he rejoined. "Then my dreams were deceptive. Dreaming after dinner suggests age. I'll have to buck up." "Buck up now, and talk to me," Pamela said. "You've been very slow this evening." "Have I?" He took hold of her wrist and spanned it with his fingers. "You are growing abominably thin," he remarked irrelevantly. Involuntarily, he compared her slimness with Blanche Maitland's generous lines, and decided that thinness was unbecoming. "I never was plump," Pamela answered calmly, quite satisfied with her own proportions, and unconscious of his comparison. "No... `A rag and a bone and a hank of hair' ... How does the thing go?" "I don't think I want to hear any more of it," she said. He laughed.