He talked quickly, eagerly. His face was flushed, and a sort of boyish shyness showed in his eyes. She regarded him with an air of faint perplexity and said nothing. His abrupt confidences were disconcerting. "You won't forget these few days altogether, will you?" he urged. Her composed face, her air of increasing surprise, damped his ardour considerably. The light died out of his eyes. "I shan't forget a single day of all the days I spend here," she replied, not knowing that she was unkind, not meaning to be. She was not thinking of Sinclair. Her appreciation had nothing to do with him. She was reviewing her earlier impressions, feeling again the joy which the sense of beauty gives; the complete satisfaction of that walk towards the sunrise, and the magic splendour of the morning when the world stirred out of slumber, dew-drenched and asparkle in the golden radiance of the newly risen sun. She had realised, as she stepped confidently forward in its warmth, the wonder and the goodness of being alive. That sense of well-being remained with her, would remain with her when the boy, who looked to her for a response she was unable to make, was gone down the mountain road out of her dream. He was no part of the dream: he was merely a transitory figure flitting through the gold-blue mist. "I don't know what it is about the place which grips me so, unless it is that it is unlike any place I've ever seen. I love the brooding silence and the warmth and the soft mountain air. There is health in every breath of it. Down at the Bay the winds rend one. It's all heat and noise and rush." "Oh! the Bay's not half a bad place," he protested. "Most people at the beginning of a holiday feel as you do; but it wears off. You will be jolly well bored at the end of a fortnight. Travelling always along one old road grows monotonous. And whichever way you go it's the same old road. You may strike across the veld, but sooner or later you have to come back to the road." "After all,"--she looked at him quickly,--"it isn't monotony that bores one really. We like doing the familiar thing." "Not necessarily," he returned. "When it is a case of returning to work, the familiar thing becomes a nuisance. I wish you were driving down the mountain with me. Don't come out to see the start. I don't wish you to make one of the crowd. I'm going to say good-bye to you here. I am leaving my racquet behind. I want you to use it, will you? I've another at my digs, so you needn't feel you are depriving me. I want you to have it." "That's very kind of you," she said, touched by this act of generosity, and secretly embarrassed. She could not without ungraciousness refuse, but she wished that he had not placed her under this obligation. "It will serve to pass an hour or two when you weary of the same old road," he said, smiling.