Chapter Twenty.

Chapter Twenty.Oddly enough the first news of Blanche Maitland came to Mrs Carruthers through Dare.He mentioned in a letter that he had been to a music-hall entertainment where to his amazement the sphinx-like young person, who was a paragon of all the virtues, was playing accompaniments for the members of a musical troupe, to which she apparently belonged.“I understood she was fostering the Arnott babies,” he wrote. “You don’t keep me fully posted as to events, as you promised. I tried to get hold of her, but learnt that she had gone on to Pretoria. It is an odd life for a girl, but more amusing, possibly, than tending the future generation.”Further on in the letter he said:“I ran across Arnott in town—another surprise. He was very surly, and seemed to wish to avoid me, so I reconsidered my hospitable intention to ask him to lunch with me. How is She? If you don’t mention Her in your next letter I shall run down and pursue my own inquiries.”Mrs Carruthers was highly perplexed. Why, she wondered, if Blanche had gone away with Arnott should she have joined a troupe of strolling singers? And if she had not gone away with Arnott, why was he in Johannesburg at the same time?Carruthers could not explain this also as a coincidence. He did not attempt to. He remarked that it looked fishy, and asked his wife if she intended to inform Pamela. Mrs Carruthers was undecided.“I don’t know what to do,” she confessed. “I think I’ll write to George, and tell him to find out what he can about them. It will be necessary to explain certain things to him; I am sorry to be obliged to do that.”“Why?” inquired Carruthers.She looked at him for a moment uncertainly. Dickie was a well-meaning person, but he was not astute. She possessed a beautiful contempt for his perspicacity.“George admires Pamela,” she said.Carruthers received this intelligence unmoved.“He would be a little unusual if he didn’t,” he returned. “I don’t see why that fact should make you hesitate to enlist his services; it’s much more likely to make him of use. Dare is cut out for the rôle of knight to distressed beauty; it suits his proportions; a stout man looks absurd in the cast.”Mrs Carruthers showed impatience.“If you can’t help, don’t make fatuous remarks,” she said. “George takes it too seriously. We don’t want to complicate the present muddle. If I felt that he might make a fool of himself over this business I would sooner bite out my tongue than inform him.”“Then we aren’t any forrader,” Carruthers returned imperturbably, “except that we have a clue to Arnott’s whereabouts, which in my opinion you have no right to keep from his wife.”“We don’t know positively that she isn’t fully informed,” she replied.Mrs Carruthers was worried, and felt consequently irritated. Dare’s letter had reopened a subject which had been slipping comfortably into the background of her thoughts. She was sorry for Pamela, whom she would willingly have helped had it lain in her power; but Pamela made no offer to confide in her. She never referred to Arnott’s absence,—never spoke of him now. Mrs Carruthers formed the opinion that she still had no knowledge of his movements, that she did not know when to expect him back. An unpleasant sense of mystery hung over the affair, which imposed a painful constraint on their friendly relations. Pamela avoided intercourse with her neighbours, and was seldom to be seen without the children; it was as though she used them as a shield to guard against awkward encounters. But that she was unhappy was very obvious. She had become transformed into a thoughtful, care-worn woman, in whose eyes there lurked always a haunting expression of dread. It was this expression which, in spite of Pamela’s aloofness, kept Mrs Carruthers’ sympathies alight, and moved her, against her very earnest desire to keep George Dare from mixing himself up in Pamela’s affairs, to write to him, and request him to discover if he could what Arnott was doing in Johannesburg.Her letter brought Dare to Wynberg. He descended upon her in his usual informal manner, announcing his intended visit by telegram, and following the announcement as speedily as circumstances permitted. This course was a practice with him of many years’ standing, and never before the present occasion had Mrs Carruthers resented it. The receipt of the telegram annoyed her. She had asked him to find out certain things about Arnott, and in response he had come away from the centre where he could have instigated inquiries which might have elicited useful information, led by some wild, unaccountable impulse which he ought, she felt, to have resisted. That he would come down had been the last thought in her mind.Dare received a frigid welcome. He was in a way prepared for this. The letter she had written had been so vague and guarded in its wording that he had read between the lines her desire to keep him in the dark as far as possible as to the reason for the inquiries she wished him to make. Dare had no intention of being kept in the dark in any matter relating to Pamela. He intended to find out things for himself.“You don’t appear overjoyed to see me,” he observed to his unwelcoming hostess, whose greeting of him lacked the warmth and kindliness he was accustomed to from her.“I am not,” she answered severely. “Whatever did you come for?”“To see Pamela,” he replied unhesitatingly.“Why?”“Because from your mysterious communication I judged she was in some difficulty. You gave me a few insufficient facts. I want details. If you won’t give them to me, she will.”Mrs Carruthers deliberated.“I asked you to find out what Arnott was doing in Johannesburg,” she said presently. “I fail to see what there was in that request to bring you to Wynberg.”“Arnott is not in Johannesburg any longer. He was leaving on the day I met him,” he returned. “Why should you concern yourself about his movements? Presumably your request was not based on anxiety on his account; therefore I concluded your concern must be for Mrs Arnott. I came down to find out.”“I hope you are not going to give me cause to regret having written that letter,” she said seriously.“I hope not,” he responded with equal gravity. “Why should you imagine anything of the sort? As I told you before, I only wish to be helpful to her.”She turned the subject, and talked to him on other matters; but Dare, after a brief interval, brought the conversation back to the topic which most interested him. He got very little satisfaction from Mrs Carruthers. Carruthers was more communicative. From him Dare heard the whole story, embellished with details which Mrs Carruthers had not heard. Arnott was pretty freely discussed at the club, of which he and Carruthers were members. Carruthers had come round to believe in his wife’s theory that Arnott had eloped with the governess. The fact that she was touring with a musical troupe, was in his opinion merely a blind. When he tired of the girl, doubtless he would chuck it and come home.“Well,” said Dare, “I’m glad you told me. But I don’t believe a word of it. He wasn’t with the girl in Johannesburg, save in the sense of being in the same town. I’m going to clear up this business for my own satisfaction. To-morrow I shall call on Mrs Arnott.”“I supposed that was your object,” Carruthers answered. “But you won’t get much out of her. It’s my belief she is as ignorant as the rest of us. She’s feeling this, Dare. It makes me feel sloppily sentimental merely to look at her. The chap wants kicking. You be careful what you are doing, my boy. I am rather of Connie’s opinion that you’d be wiser to keep out of this. It’s the devil of a business to attempt comforting a pretty married woman. Stick to widows and spinsters, I say. What!”“You’re an awful old ass, Dickie,” was all Dare said in response.Dare experienced a curious exasperation in the knowledge that the Carruthers both doubted the disinterestedness of his purpose in seeking to be of use to Pamela. A man may befriend the woman he loves without any base thought in connection with her. In coming to Wynberg to see Pamela, Dare had no other intention than to be of service to her. The doubtful possibility of being able to serve a woman whose husband has presumably deserted her, did not strike him. Once in possession of the facts he would be in a position at least to advise her; might, if things were not as Carruthers represented them, assist in putting a stop to the scandal that was afloat. It was abominable to reflect that Pamela’s name was being bandied about at the clubs.Pamela was in the garden when Dare called in the morning. The boy was asleep on a kaross spread under the trees, and she was seated in a chair near him, sewing, when Dare opened the gate and entered. The sound of his footsteps on the hard gravel caused her to look up; and an expression of quick alarm showed in her face as her eyes met his.He advanced swiftly towards her; and, as he crossed the lawn, she rose and stood, flushed, embarrassed, painfully self-conscious, looking at him in a dismayed silence which she seemed unable to break. Dare spoke first.“I’ve sprung a surprise on you,” he said, and took her proffered hand and held it firmly gripped in his. “I’m staying next door.”“I didn’t know you were expected,” Pamela returned, recovering herself with an effort, and giving him a welcoming smile. “I haven’t seen Connie for days.”“It was a surprise for her too,” he admitted. “I came self-invited. Are you busy? I should like to stay for a chat, if I may.”“That’s my only business at present,” she said, and pointed towards the sleeping child. “I’m on guard.”Dare looked down at the child.“The little chap grows,” he remarked. “He was only a baby when last I saw him. How’s the girlie?”“Oh! very well. If you stay you will see her later. She is out at present. Sit down, won’t you?”He drew a chair forward facing hers on the side farthest away from the child, and sat down. It recalled, save for the boy’s unconscious presence, the afternoon when he had last sat there with her, and had wrung from her the promise which she had failed to keep.“It is like old times, this,” he observed, and scrutinised her thoughtfully as he sat back in his seat. Despite the flush in her cheeks which the sight of him had brought there, he could not fail to detect traces of the trouble which had wrought such a marked change in her appearance that, had he needed assurance there was something in what Carruthers had told him, her face would have supplied the necessary proof. “I’m awfully glad to see you again. I came with that object,” he said.“To see me!” Pamela looked puzzled.“To see you,” he repeated. “Do you remember something I asked you to do in this garden, the last time we sat here?”Pamela did not immediately answer. That she followed his question he realised by the deepening of the flush in her cheeks. She lay back in her chair, very still and quiet, the long lashes drooping above her eyes, veiling the trouble in their depths. Dare sat forward now, regarding her steadily.“What was that?” she asked presently; and he knew that she put the question merely to gain time. She understood perfectly to what he referred.“You promised me that if ever you were in a position in which a friend might prove helpful, you would extend to me a friend’s privilege,” he said earnestly. “Have you kept that promise?”“I have not been in that position,” Pamela replied without looking at him.Dare laid a hand on her dress.“Pamela,” he said quietly, “I think I deserve that you should be honest with me.”She turned very white. How he had learnt of the trouble which she believed was known only to herself, she had no means of judging, but that he was in possession of certain information his manner assured her. She wondered how he had come by his knowledge,—how much he knew. Suddenly she experienced again the longing to confide in him, the intense desire for his sympathy and counsel which had moved her to the point of writing to him on the day when she had discovered the further proof of Arnott’s treachery. Since that day until now she had not thought of appealing to him.“I did write,” she confessed in a low voice, “over a month ago; but I tore the letter up. Then something happened, and I felt I couldn’t write.”He looked at her for a moment or so in silence. The flush had come back to her cheeks, and the blue of her eyes as they met his darkened almost, to black. The pathos, and the wistfulness of them wrung his heart.“I’m glad you thought of writing,” he said; “that was something towards it anyway. I want you to go a little further and confide in me fully.”“I’ve thought of doing that,—I’ve wanted to,” she said. “But—”She glanced at her sleeping child, and from him back into the strong, sympathetic face of this man who sought to serve her, whose help she so sorely needed.“If I only knew what to do!” she cried.“I’m telling you what to do,” he answered. “It seems to me perfectly simple. Whatever the difficulty is it can’t make it easier hugging it to yourself; and if it lies within the scope of human power to help you, you know I’ll do anything for you.” He leaned towards her suddenly and grasped her hand. “Pamela, don’t you trust me?”“Yes,” she said, troubled and hesitating... “Yes. But I can’t talk to you here.”“No,” he said. “But later...”“When Maggie comes for the child,” she answered in a whisper, “we will go indoors... I—will trust you...”

Oddly enough the first news of Blanche Maitland came to Mrs Carruthers through Dare.

He mentioned in a letter that he had been to a music-hall entertainment where to his amazement the sphinx-like young person, who was a paragon of all the virtues, was playing accompaniments for the members of a musical troupe, to which she apparently belonged.

“I understood she was fostering the Arnott babies,” he wrote. “You don’t keep me fully posted as to events, as you promised. I tried to get hold of her, but learnt that she had gone on to Pretoria. It is an odd life for a girl, but more amusing, possibly, than tending the future generation.”

Further on in the letter he said:

“I ran across Arnott in town—another surprise. He was very surly, and seemed to wish to avoid me, so I reconsidered my hospitable intention to ask him to lunch with me. How is She? If you don’t mention Her in your next letter I shall run down and pursue my own inquiries.”

Mrs Carruthers was highly perplexed. Why, she wondered, if Blanche had gone away with Arnott should she have joined a troupe of strolling singers? And if she had not gone away with Arnott, why was he in Johannesburg at the same time?

Carruthers could not explain this also as a coincidence. He did not attempt to. He remarked that it looked fishy, and asked his wife if she intended to inform Pamela. Mrs Carruthers was undecided.

“I don’t know what to do,” she confessed. “I think I’ll write to George, and tell him to find out what he can about them. It will be necessary to explain certain things to him; I am sorry to be obliged to do that.”

“Why?” inquired Carruthers.

She looked at him for a moment uncertainly. Dickie was a well-meaning person, but he was not astute. She possessed a beautiful contempt for his perspicacity.

“George admires Pamela,” she said.

Carruthers received this intelligence unmoved.

“He would be a little unusual if he didn’t,” he returned. “I don’t see why that fact should make you hesitate to enlist his services; it’s much more likely to make him of use. Dare is cut out for the rôle of knight to distressed beauty; it suits his proportions; a stout man looks absurd in the cast.”

Mrs Carruthers showed impatience.

“If you can’t help, don’t make fatuous remarks,” she said. “George takes it too seriously. We don’t want to complicate the present muddle. If I felt that he might make a fool of himself over this business I would sooner bite out my tongue than inform him.”

“Then we aren’t any forrader,” Carruthers returned imperturbably, “except that we have a clue to Arnott’s whereabouts, which in my opinion you have no right to keep from his wife.”

“We don’t know positively that she isn’t fully informed,” she replied.

Mrs Carruthers was worried, and felt consequently irritated. Dare’s letter had reopened a subject which had been slipping comfortably into the background of her thoughts. She was sorry for Pamela, whom she would willingly have helped had it lain in her power; but Pamela made no offer to confide in her. She never referred to Arnott’s absence,—never spoke of him now. Mrs Carruthers formed the opinion that she still had no knowledge of his movements, that she did not know when to expect him back. An unpleasant sense of mystery hung over the affair, which imposed a painful constraint on their friendly relations. Pamela avoided intercourse with her neighbours, and was seldom to be seen without the children; it was as though she used them as a shield to guard against awkward encounters. But that she was unhappy was very obvious. She had become transformed into a thoughtful, care-worn woman, in whose eyes there lurked always a haunting expression of dread. It was this expression which, in spite of Pamela’s aloofness, kept Mrs Carruthers’ sympathies alight, and moved her, against her very earnest desire to keep George Dare from mixing himself up in Pamela’s affairs, to write to him, and request him to discover if he could what Arnott was doing in Johannesburg.

Her letter brought Dare to Wynberg. He descended upon her in his usual informal manner, announcing his intended visit by telegram, and following the announcement as speedily as circumstances permitted. This course was a practice with him of many years’ standing, and never before the present occasion had Mrs Carruthers resented it. The receipt of the telegram annoyed her. She had asked him to find out certain things about Arnott, and in response he had come away from the centre where he could have instigated inquiries which might have elicited useful information, led by some wild, unaccountable impulse which he ought, she felt, to have resisted. That he would come down had been the last thought in her mind.

Dare received a frigid welcome. He was in a way prepared for this. The letter she had written had been so vague and guarded in its wording that he had read between the lines her desire to keep him in the dark as far as possible as to the reason for the inquiries she wished him to make. Dare had no intention of being kept in the dark in any matter relating to Pamela. He intended to find out things for himself.

“You don’t appear overjoyed to see me,” he observed to his unwelcoming hostess, whose greeting of him lacked the warmth and kindliness he was accustomed to from her.

“I am not,” she answered severely. “Whatever did you come for?”

“To see Pamela,” he replied unhesitatingly.

“Why?”

“Because from your mysterious communication I judged she was in some difficulty. You gave me a few insufficient facts. I want details. If you won’t give them to me, she will.”

Mrs Carruthers deliberated.

“I asked you to find out what Arnott was doing in Johannesburg,” she said presently. “I fail to see what there was in that request to bring you to Wynberg.”

“Arnott is not in Johannesburg any longer. He was leaving on the day I met him,” he returned. “Why should you concern yourself about his movements? Presumably your request was not based on anxiety on his account; therefore I concluded your concern must be for Mrs Arnott. I came down to find out.”

“I hope you are not going to give me cause to regret having written that letter,” she said seriously.

“I hope not,” he responded with equal gravity. “Why should you imagine anything of the sort? As I told you before, I only wish to be helpful to her.”

She turned the subject, and talked to him on other matters; but Dare, after a brief interval, brought the conversation back to the topic which most interested him. He got very little satisfaction from Mrs Carruthers. Carruthers was more communicative. From him Dare heard the whole story, embellished with details which Mrs Carruthers had not heard. Arnott was pretty freely discussed at the club, of which he and Carruthers were members. Carruthers had come round to believe in his wife’s theory that Arnott had eloped with the governess. The fact that she was touring with a musical troupe, was in his opinion merely a blind. When he tired of the girl, doubtless he would chuck it and come home.

“Well,” said Dare, “I’m glad you told me. But I don’t believe a word of it. He wasn’t with the girl in Johannesburg, save in the sense of being in the same town. I’m going to clear up this business for my own satisfaction. To-morrow I shall call on Mrs Arnott.”

“I supposed that was your object,” Carruthers answered. “But you won’t get much out of her. It’s my belief she is as ignorant as the rest of us. She’s feeling this, Dare. It makes me feel sloppily sentimental merely to look at her. The chap wants kicking. You be careful what you are doing, my boy. I am rather of Connie’s opinion that you’d be wiser to keep out of this. It’s the devil of a business to attempt comforting a pretty married woman. Stick to widows and spinsters, I say. What!”

“You’re an awful old ass, Dickie,” was all Dare said in response.

Dare experienced a curious exasperation in the knowledge that the Carruthers both doubted the disinterestedness of his purpose in seeking to be of use to Pamela. A man may befriend the woman he loves without any base thought in connection with her. In coming to Wynberg to see Pamela, Dare had no other intention than to be of service to her. The doubtful possibility of being able to serve a woman whose husband has presumably deserted her, did not strike him. Once in possession of the facts he would be in a position at least to advise her; might, if things were not as Carruthers represented them, assist in putting a stop to the scandal that was afloat. It was abominable to reflect that Pamela’s name was being bandied about at the clubs.

Pamela was in the garden when Dare called in the morning. The boy was asleep on a kaross spread under the trees, and she was seated in a chair near him, sewing, when Dare opened the gate and entered. The sound of his footsteps on the hard gravel caused her to look up; and an expression of quick alarm showed in her face as her eyes met his.

He advanced swiftly towards her; and, as he crossed the lawn, she rose and stood, flushed, embarrassed, painfully self-conscious, looking at him in a dismayed silence which she seemed unable to break. Dare spoke first.

“I’ve sprung a surprise on you,” he said, and took her proffered hand and held it firmly gripped in his. “I’m staying next door.”

“I didn’t know you were expected,” Pamela returned, recovering herself with an effort, and giving him a welcoming smile. “I haven’t seen Connie for days.”

“It was a surprise for her too,” he admitted. “I came self-invited. Are you busy? I should like to stay for a chat, if I may.”

“That’s my only business at present,” she said, and pointed towards the sleeping child. “I’m on guard.”

Dare looked down at the child.

“The little chap grows,” he remarked. “He was only a baby when last I saw him. How’s the girlie?”

“Oh! very well. If you stay you will see her later. She is out at present. Sit down, won’t you?”

He drew a chair forward facing hers on the side farthest away from the child, and sat down. It recalled, save for the boy’s unconscious presence, the afternoon when he had last sat there with her, and had wrung from her the promise which she had failed to keep.

“It is like old times, this,” he observed, and scrutinised her thoughtfully as he sat back in his seat. Despite the flush in her cheeks which the sight of him had brought there, he could not fail to detect traces of the trouble which had wrought such a marked change in her appearance that, had he needed assurance there was something in what Carruthers had told him, her face would have supplied the necessary proof. “I’m awfully glad to see you again. I came with that object,” he said.

“To see me!” Pamela looked puzzled.

“To see you,” he repeated. “Do you remember something I asked you to do in this garden, the last time we sat here?”

Pamela did not immediately answer. That she followed his question he realised by the deepening of the flush in her cheeks. She lay back in her chair, very still and quiet, the long lashes drooping above her eyes, veiling the trouble in their depths. Dare sat forward now, regarding her steadily.

“What was that?” she asked presently; and he knew that she put the question merely to gain time. She understood perfectly to what he referred.

“You promised me that if ever you were in a position in which a friend might prove helpful, you would extend to me a friend’s privilege,” he said earnestly. “Have you kept that promise?”

“I have not been in that position,” Pamela replied without looking at him.

Dare laid a hand on her dress.

“Pamela,” he said quietly, “I think I deserve that you should be honest with me.”

She turned very white. How he had learnt of the trouble which she believed was known only to herself, she had no means of judging, but that he was in possession of certain information his manner assured her. She wondered how he had come by his knowledge,—how much he knew. Suddenly she experienced again the longing to confide in him, the intense desire for his sympathy and counsel which had moved her to the point of writing to him on the day when she had discovered the further proof of Arnott’s treachery. Since that day until now she had not thought of appealing to him.

“I did write,” she confessed in a low voice, “over a month ago; but I tore the letter up. Then something happened, and I felt I couldn’t write.”

He looked at her for a moment or so in silence. The flush had come back to her cheeks, and the blue of her eyes as they met his darkened almost, to black. The pathos, and the wistfulness of them wrung his heart.

“I’m glad you thought of writing,” he said; “that was something towards it anyway. I want you to go a little further and confide in me fully.”

“I’ve thought of doing that,—I’ve wanted to,” she said. “But—”

She glanced at her sleeping child, and from him back into the strong, sympathetic face of this man who sought to serve her, whose help she so sorely needed.

“If I only knew what to do!” she cried.

“I’m telling you what to do,” he answered. “It seems to me perfectly simple. Whatever the difficulty is it can’t make it easier hugging it to yourself; and if it lies within the scope of human power to help you, you know I’ll do anything for you.” He leaned towards her suddenly and grasped her hand. “Pamela, don’t you trust me?”

“Yes,” she said, troubled and hesitating... “Yes. But I can’t talk to you here.”

“No,” he said. “But later...”

“When Maggie comes for the child,” she answered in a whisper, “we will go indoors... I—will trust you...”

Chapter Twenty One.No matter how great a control a man exercises over himself in ordinary circumstances, brought face to face with the painfully unexpected it is frequently the self-contained man who loses the grip on his emotions, and with it his more extended outlook in favour of an immense concentration upon the personal factor created by the new development. The story which Pamela unfolded produced some such effect on Dare. The emotions which moved him while listening to the sordid, pitiful tale were varied. The story of Arnott’s bigamous marriage enraged him. The personal factor crept into that. The man had not only cheated the girl, he had cheated him,—robbed him of the only woman he had ever wished to marry. He had stolen her from him, having no right to her. This thought filled him with a bitter sense of personal loss, of personal injury. The element of self threw his imagination out of focus for the time. He had a very strong feeling that he wanted to, that he had to, punish Arnott for that mean deception. He would have enjoyed coming to grips with the man.Then he became acutely aware that Pamela was still talking, telling him other things of an equally painful nature. With an effort he brought his mind back to the subject.This part of the story was more difficult to tell. Pamela told it in short fragmentary sentences. She concealed nothing. She spoke of her enlightenment, of the difficult choice offered her, and her inability to choose the right course, in low strained tones and with downcast eyes. She did not look at Dare while she spoke. He was standing in front of the window, with his back to the opening, watching her with grave intent face which betrayed little of what he was feeling as he listened to the difficult recital. He was endeavouring, despite the disappointment her confession caused him, to excuse, even to defend, her choice. As she urged, there had been the child to consider, and at that time she loved the man.Then she spoke of the waning of Arnott’s love, of his frequent unkindness, and her own increasing indifference. Again Dare was conscious of his personal interest in this part of the story. The self-confessed decrease in her love for the man who was not her husband, affected him directly. He felt glad that she had told him that.She passed on to Arnott’s infatuation for the girl, who was her children’s governess, of their disappearance on the same day, and the inevitable conclusion which, against her own will, she had arrived at in connection with that circumstance, and the fact that he had not written, nor sent any explanation of his absence.Then came the most difficult part of the whole narrative. Pamela had fetched the cablegram, which she had found in Arnott’s desk and transferred to the safe, and this she placed in Dare’s hand as the simplest way of explaining the duplicity she found impossible to put into words.“You see,” she said, “that cablegram is a year old. He received that ten months before he left home... And he never told me. I found it after he had gone. He did not intend to take advantage of that knowledge... He didn’t care.”Tears, the first she had shed, came into her eyes. She wiped them away quietly.“He doesn’t care,” she said, “what becomes of me and the children.”Dare, as he held in his hands the cablegram which assured him that the man who had tricked this woman to whom he was not lawfully married, was now free to fulfil his obligation, realised perfectly that of all people calculated to be of service to her in the present crisis he was the worst chosen. He was only conscious of a feeling of regret that the barrier had been removed. It swamped for the time the more chivalrous emotion of pity for Pamela in her helpless position. He stared at the cablegram for a long while without speaking. Then he said, still without looking at her—“I am afraid there isn’t any reason for doubting the correctness of your deduction in this instance. The evidence is damning.” He lifted his eyes from the paper suddenly and fixed them upon her. “This matter wants thinking over carefully,” he said. “I wasn’t prepared for this. It’s worse than anything I had anticipated.”The sight of her distressed face, of the slow tears raining over her cheeks, unnerved him, and at the same time called forth his better qualities. He forgot himself in the more worthy emotion of compassion for her in her affliction.“I hadn’t any idea that things were as bad as this,” he said. “Thank God! you told me. I’ll have to think out what’s best to be done. I’m unprepared, you see... But we’ve got to straighten the muddle somehow.”He had in his mind a plan, which had presented itself when she confessed to the bogus nature of her marriage, whereby the muddle could be straightened in, what seemed to him in the circumstances, the simplest way; but in view of her present distress he hesitated to speak of that now. The knowledge of the death of Arnott’s wife complicated things.“Oh!” she cried, with soft vehemence. “The comfort of having some one to confide in,—some one I can trust! I’ve been eating my heart out these last two months. The Carruthers are very kind,—but I couldn’t tell them what I have told you. And Mr Carruthers wouldn’t be able to advise me. He would wish me to consult a lawyer.” She clasped her hands tightly in her lap. “I couldn’t have all these intimate, disgraceful details publicly exposed.”“No,” he said reassuringly; “of course not.”But he did not see how without publicity the matter could possibly be satisfactorily arranged. She might, he decided, have to agree to that later. But he refrained from troubling her at the present stage with any such alternative.“It appears to me,” he said slowly, “that the first thing to be done is to find Arnott. Until I have seen him it is impossible to come to any decision... Have I your permission to let him know that I am in full possession of the facts you have related?”She looked a little frightened.“Oh!” she said. “Must you tell him that? He will never forgive me.”“Do you think that matters?” He tapped the cablegram he still held. “In face of this, I don’t think you have much to expect from him save what is gained through compulsion. We shall be forced to use our knowledge.”She gazed up at him, faintly perplexed.“What do you mean to do?” she asked.“What do you want me to do?”Pamela hesitated. Any love which had remained from the wreckage of the past had died with the finding of the cablegram after Arnott’s desertion. It seemed to her that all sense of feeling had died with it, except only the jealous maternal love, which gathered strength with the decline of the rest.“I want only one thing from him,” she answered presently, her eyes evading his without however falling... “I’ve a right to that—his name. Don’t you think I am within my right in demanding that?”“Yes,” he agreed, “but—”Pamela glanced at him swiftly.“You think he won’t consent?” she asked.“I wasn’t thinking that. I imagine if it came to the point, we could oblige him to consent. But are you quite sure that course would be wise? Wouldn’t it, perhaps, entail fresh suffering on you?”“I was not considering myself,” she said. “It doesn’t seem to matter much what becomes of me.”He approached her, and stood over her, all the love that was in his heart revealed in his earnest eyes. He had not intended to speak of his love then; the time occurred to him as ill chosen; but while she discussed in such calm, dispassionate tones the only solution which presented itself to her mind, it seemed to him, if he delayed showing her another way out of her present trouble, the opportunity might not offer itself again.“Won’t you,” he said very quietly, “take my name instead?”He seated himself on the sofa beside her, and possessed himself of her hands, which he held in both his. Pamela made no attempt to withdraw them. White and distressed and manifestly disconcerted, she averted her gaze from his and stared past him out at the sunshine. Her sole reason for hesitating to write to Dare had resulted from the conviction that his regard for her was deeper than that of a friend. Her feeling for him did not bear analysis either. He was a man whom from the first she had liked and respected; the respect remained unaltered, but the liking had increased insensibly until it assumed an importance in her thoughts which she found it best to discourage. Not for a moment did it strike her that he made this offer out of pity for her. She knew that he loved her,—that he wanted her. His proposal filled her less with surprise than concern. She was sorry to know that her own broken life might embitter his.“Won’t you,” he repeated in the same quiet voice as before, “accept my name? I think you know that I love you. I have loved you for a great many years. I shouldn’t speak of that now; only it seems to me such a tragic mistake you are making. The life you contemplate would be a wretched business. You will spoil the happiness of two lives—yours and mine—if you persist in it... I think I could make you happy, Pamela, if you would let me try.”Deliberately she faced round and met his gaze with sad blue eyes which seemed to have lost entirely their old happy expression.“I know you could,” she answered, her voice almost a whisper. “If it is any sort of satisfaction to you to hear it, I love you too. But I can’t do what you ask. For the sake of my children I must marry their father. Don’t you see the difference it makes to them?”“I thought it might be that,” he said. “But consider, Pamela,—they are so young. Don’t you think they would be as happy and as safe under my guardianship?”“That isn’t the point to consider,” she answered steadily. “When a woman has been circumstanced as I have been she realises the enormous difference these things make. I’ve felt the sting of it,—the dread of discovery,—the overwhelming sense of shame. I should be a selfish mother if I exposed my children to that. In whatever light you stood to them, you could never make good the position which they have a right to as their father’s children. Later, when they grow up, the world will make them feel that loss. If there were only myself to think of I wouldn’t hesitate. But we take upon ourselves a great responsibility when we bring a life into the world... It’s for the sake of the children... Oh! believe me, dear, it’s only for their sakes I refuse.”The earnestness of her manner, the tears which dimmed her eyes and were with difficulty restrained, affected him deeply. He realised that the barrier which stood between them was insuperable as she saw it; but he was far from satisfied that she was right. Why in later years should the question of the children’s parentage arise? He would take them away from Africa, and adopt them legally. He endeavoured to explain this to her. Pamela listened quietly; but he felt that he failed in convincing her.“It is dear of you,” she said, and pressed his hand. “But there is only one way in which I can hope to retrieve my mistake. I can’t help thinking that it is best for your sake that I cannot do what you ask. The past clings to a woman. She never succeeds in burying it. I love you for loving me. I love you for wanting to marry me in spite of all you know. It is difficult for me to refuse; but it is better so.”“Oh! Pamela,” he said; “you are just racking me. My happiness is bound up in you. I’ve nursed my love for you hopelessly for years, until everything else has become subordinated to it. It’s part of myself. And now that you have it in your power to grant what I ask, you refuse. I want you, and you won’t come to me.”“Don’t make it harder for me,” she pleaded. “It isn’t easy to refuse. Can’t you see, dear, I don’t belong to myself any longer? I belong to the man who took my life and threw it aside when he had no further use for it. He has had the best of me,—my youth—my love.” He winced. “Yes. I loved him once—passionately. I didn’t believe it possible that I could ever love any one as I loved him. But I love you... not in the same way.” She leaned towards him, and her eyes shone mistily, like sapphires gleaming in some translucent pool. “I was always a little afraid of him. Perfect love does not know fear. I wish I could marry you; but it isn’t possible... I belong to him—the father of my children. I’ve got to live for the children now. Their claim on me counts above every other consideration.”He drew her nearer to him by the hands he still held clasped in his, and looked steadily into her face.“And if he refuses?” he said hoarsely... “Pamela, if he refuses to agree to your demand?”Pamela’s eyes lingered on his for a while, the doubt which his question aroused calling up a dread of numberless possibilities.“Oh!” she said, and paused dismayed. “He can’t refuse,” she added in strained sharpened tones.She turned her head aside, and quite suddenly, without premonition, she was weeping in a furtive, frightened fashion that was immensely disconcerting to Dare. Her tears stabbed him. He got up and wandered away to the window and stood with his back to her in an attitude of deep dejection. A tormenting remorse gripped him.“He can’t refuse,” he said reassuringly. “That will be all right. He can’t on the face of things refuse...”

No matter how great a control a man exercises over himself in ordinary circumstances, brought face to face with the painfully unexpected it is frequently the self-contained man who loses the grip on his emotions, and with it his more extended outlook in favour of an immense concentration upon the personal factor created by the new development. The story which Pamela unfolded produced some such effect on Dare. The emotions which moved him while listening to the sordid, pitiful tale were varied. The story of Arnott’s bigamous marriage enraged him. The personal factor crept into that. The man had not only cheated the girl, he had cheated him,—robbed him of the only woman he had ever wished to marry. He had stolen her from him, having no right to her. This thought filled him with a bitter sense of personal loss, of personal injury. The element of self threw his imagination out of focus for the time. He had a very strong feeling that he wanted to, that he had to, punish Arnott for that mean deception. He would have enjoyed coming to grips with the man.

Then he became acutely aware that Pamela was still talking, telling him other things of an equally painful nature. With an effort he brought his mind back to the subject.

This part of the story was more difficult to tell. Pamela told it in short fragmentary sentences. She concealed nothing. She spoke of her enlightenment, of the difficult choice offered her, and her inability to choose the right course, in low strained tones and with downcast eyes. She did not look at Dare while she spoke. He was standing in front of the window, with his back to the opening, watching her with grave intent face which betrayed little of what he was feeling as he listened to the difficult recital. He was endeavouring, despite the disappointment her confession caused him, to excuse, even to defend, her choice. As she urged, there had been the child to consider, and at that time she loved the man.

Then she spoke of the waning of Arnott’s love, of his frequent unkindness, and her own increasing indifference. Again Dare was conscious of his personal interest in this part of the story. The self-confessed decrease in her love for the man who was not her husband, affected him directly. He felt glad that she had told him that.

She passed on to Arnott’s infatuation for the girl, who was her children’s governess, of their disappearance on the same day, and the inevitable conclusion which, against her own will, she had arrived at in connection with that circumstance, and the fact that he had not written, nor sent any explanation of his absence.

Then came the most difficult part of the whole narrative. Pamela had fetched the cablegram, which she had found in Arnott’s desk and transferred to the safe, and this she placed in Dare’s hand as the simplest way of explaining the duplicity she found impossible to put into words.

“You see,” she said, “that cablegram is a year old. He received that ten months before he left home... And he never told me. I found it after he had gone. He did not intend to take advantage of that knowledge... He didn’t care.”

Tears, the first she had shed, came into her eyes. She wiped them away quietly.

“He doesn’t care,” she said, “what becomes of me and the children.”

Dare, as he held in his hands the cablegram which assured him that the man who had tricked this woman to whom he was not lawfully married, was now free to fulfil his obligation, realised perfectly that of all people calculated to be of service to her in the present crisis he was the worst chosen. He was only conscious of a feeling of regret that the barrier had been removed. It swamped for the time the more chivalrous emotion of pity for Pamela in her helpless position. He stared at the cablegram for a long while without speaking. Then he said, still without looking at her—

“I am afraid there isn’t any reason for doubting the correctness of your deduction in this instance. The evidence is damning.” He lifted his eyes from the paper suddenly and fixed them upon her. “This matter wants thinking over carefully,” he said. “I wasn’t prepared for this. It’s worse than anything I had anticipated.”

The sight of her distressed face, of the slow tears raining over her cheeks, unnerved him, and at the same time called forth his better qualities. He forgot himself in the more worthy emotion of compassion for her in her affliction.

“I hadn’t any idea that things were as bad as this,” he said. “Thank God! you told me. I’ll have to think out what’s best to be done. I’m unprepared, you see... But we’ve got to straighten the muddle somehow.”

He had in his mind a plan, which had presented itself when she confessed to the bogus nature of her marriage, whereby the muddle could be straightened in, what seemed to him in the circumstances, the simplest way; but in view of her present distress he hesitated to speak of that now. The knowledge of the death of Arnott’s wife complicated things.

“Oh!” she cried, with soft vehemence. “The comfort of having some one to confide in,—some one I can trust! I’ve been eating my heart out these last two months. The Carruthers are very kind,—but I couldn’t tell them what I have told you. And Mr Carruthers wouldn’t be able to advise me. He would wish me to consult a lawyer.” She clasped her hands tightly in her lap. “I couldn’t have all these intimate, disgraceful details publicly exposed.”

“No,” he said reassuringly; “of course not.”

But he did not see how without publicity the matter could possibly be satisfactorily arranged. She might, he decided, have to agree to that later. But he refrained from troubling her at the present stage with any such alternative.

“It appears to me,” he said slowly, “that the first thing to be done is to find Arnott. Until I have seen him it is impossible to come to any decision... Have I your permission to let him know that I am in full possession of the facts you have related?”

She looked a little frightened.

“Oh!” she said. “Must you tell him that? He will never forgive me.”

“Do you think that matters?” He tapped the cablegram he still held. “In face of this, I don’t think you have much to expect from him save what is gained through compulsion. We shall be forced to use our knowledge.”

She gazed up at him, faintly perplexed.

“What do you mean to do?” she asked.

“What do you want me to do?”

Pamela hesitated. Any love which had remained from the wreckage of the past had died with the finding of the cablegram after Arnott’s desertion. It seemed to her that all sense of feeling had died with it, except only the jealous maternal love, which gathered strength with the decline of the rest.

“I want only one thing from him,” she answered presently, her eyes evading his without however falling... “I’ve a right to that—his name. Don’t you think I am within my right in demanding that?”

“Yes,” he agreed, “but—”

Pamela glanced at him swiftly.

“You think he won’t consent?” she asked.

“I wasn’t thinking that. I imagine if it came to the point, we could oblige him to consent. But are you quite sure that course would be wise? Wouldn’t it, perhaps, entail fresh suffering on you?”

“I was not considering myself,” she said. “It doesn’t seem to matter much what becomes of me.”

He approached her, and stood over her, all the love that was in his heart revealed in his earnest eyes. He had not intended to speak of his love then; the time occurred to him as ill chosen; but while she discussed in such calm, dispassionate tones the only solution which presented itself to her mind, it seemed to him, if he delayed showing her another way out of her present trouble, the opportunity might not offer itself again.

“Won’t you,” he said very quietly, “take my name instead?”

He seated himself on the sofa beside her, and possessed himself of her hands, which he held in both his. Pamela made no attempt to withdraw them. White and distressed and manifestly disconcerted, she averted her gaze from his and stared past him out at the sunshine. Her sole reason for hesitating to write to Dare had resulted from the conviction that his regard for her was deeper than that of a friend. Her feeling for him did not bear analysis either. He was a man whom from the first she had liked and respected; the respect remained unaltered, but the liking had increased insensibly until it assumed an importance in her thoughts which she found it best to discourage. Not for a moment did it strike her that he made this offer out of pity for her. She knew that he loved her,—that he wanted her. His proposal filled her less with surprise than concern. She was sorry to know that her own broken life might embitter his.

“Won’t you,” he repeated in the same quiet voice as before, “accept my name? I think you know that I love you. I have loved you for a great many years. I shouldn’t speak of that now; only it seems to me such a tragic mistake you are making. The life you contemplate would be a wretched business. You will spoil the happiness of two lives—yours and mine—if you persist in it... I think I could make you happy, Pamela, if you would let me try.”

Deliberately she faced round and met his gaze with sad blue eyes which seemed to have lost entirely their old happy expression.

“I know you could,” she answered, her voice almost a whisper. “If it is any sort of satisfaction to you to hear it, I love you too. But I can’t do what you ask. For the sake of my children I must marry their father. Don’t you see the difference it makes to them?”

“I thought it might be that,” he said. “But consider, Pamela,—they are so young. Don’t you think they would be as happy and as safe under my guardianship?”

“That isn’t the point to consider,” she answered steadily. “When a woman has been circumstanced as I have been she realises the enormous difference these things make. I’ve felt the sting of it,—the dread of discovery,—the overwhelming sense of shame. I should be a selfish mother if I exposed my children to that. In whatever light you stood to them, you could never make good the position which they have a right to as their father’s children. Later, when they grow up, the world will make them feel that loss. If there were only myself to think of I wouldn’t hesitate. But we take upon ourselves a great responsibility when we bring a life into the world... It’s for the sake of the children... Oh! believe me, dear, it’s only for their sakes I refuse.”

The earnestness of her manner, the tears which dimmed her eyes and were with difficulty restrained, affected him deeply. He realised that the barrier which stood between them was insuperable as she saw it; but he was far from satisfied that she was right. Why in later years should the question of the children’s parentage arise? He would take them away from Africa, and adopt them legally. He endeavoured to explain this to her. Pamela listened quietly; but he felt that he failed in convincing her.

“It is dear of you,” she said, and pressed his hand. “But there is only one way in which I can hope to retrieve my mistake. I can’t help thinking that it is best for your sake that I cannot do what you ask. The past clings to a woman. She never succeeds in burying it. I love you for loving me. I love you for wanting to marry me in spite of all you know. It is difficult for me to refuse; but it is better so.”

“Oh! Pamela,” he said; “you are just racking me. My happiness is bound up in you. I’ve nursed my love for you hopelessly for years, until everything else has become subordinated to it. It’s part of myself. And now that you have it in your power to grant what I ask, you refuse. I want you, and you won’t come to me.”

“Don’t make it harder for me,” she pleaded. “It isn’t easy to refuse. Can’t you see, dear, I don’t belong to myself any longer? I belong to the man who took my life and threw it aside when he had no further use for it. He has had the best of me,—my youth—my love.” He winced. “Yes. I loved him once—passionately. I didn’t believe it possible that I could ever love any one as I loved him. But I love you... not in the same way.” She leaned towards him, and her eyes shone mistily, like sapphires gleaming in some translucent pool. “I was always a little afraid of him. Perfect love does not know fear. I wish I could marry you; but it isn’t possible... I belong to him—the father of my children. I’ve got to live for the children now. Their claim on me counts above every other consideration.”

He drew her nearer to him by the hands he still held clasped in his, and looked steadily into her face.

“And if he refuses?” he said hoarsely... “Pamela, if he refuses to agree to your demand?”

Pamela’s eyes lingered on his for a while, the doubt which his question aroused calling up a dread of numberless possibilities.

“Oh!” she said, and paused dismayed. “He can’t refuse,” she added in strained sharpened tones.

She turned her head aside, and quite suddenly, without premonition, she was weeping in a furtive, frightened fashion that was immensely disconcerting to Dare. Her tears stabbed him. He got up and wandered away to the window and stood with his back to her in an attitude of deep dejection. A tormenting remorse gripped him.

“He can’t refuse,” he said reassuringly. “That will be all right. He can’t on the face of things refuse...”

Chapter Twenty Two.Dare lunched alone with Mrs Carruthers. He was a little unpunctual; but she waited for him, and they sat down as soon as he came in. She did not ply him with questions; she kept her curiosity within bounds until the meal was well advanced. He was strangely quiet and preoccupied. She did not know what to make of his dejected silence. Mysteries were worrying to Connie Carruthers’ practical nature. It was the flavour of mystery which clung about the happenings next door that caused her, despite the warmth of her affection for Pamela, to avoid the house of late. She had the keen dislike of a healthy minded person for anything in the way of concealment. Discreet reticence was praiseworthy, but furtive silence bred distrust. His visit next door had, it seemed to her, given George Dare the air of a conspirator. Whatever shadow hung over the house had enveloped him in its gloom. It was absurd in her opinion for a man to allow his feeling for a married woman to swamp him in this fashion; it betrayed a lack of dignity and self-respect.Dare did not wait for her to question him; he looked across at her towards the finish of the meal, and plunged of his own accord into the subject.“That man, Arnott, is a double-dyed scoundrel,” he said. “He has left that poor girl without a word. She doesn’t know where he is even. He doesn’t write to her.”“I suppose,” Mrs Carruthers observed calmly, “if he has eloped with some one else he would be little likely to write to her. Why, in the name of commonsense, did she confide her troubles to you? You will become obsessed with the thought of the divorce court, and carry a ring in your waistcoat pocket in anticipation of the decree absolute. I wish I had eaten my pen before I wrote that letter to you.”She became aware of the offence in Dare’s look, and was instantly contrite.“George,” she said, “I didn’t mean to be an unfeeling beast. But you ought not to have come down. You ought not to mix yourself up in the Arnott’s affairs. You can’t do any good.”“Some one’s got to see her through,” he said. “You haven’t done much in the way of helping.”“She doesn’t confide in me,” Mrs Carruthers retorted drily.“Perhaps you haven’t given her the opportunity,” he returned. “I don’t think you have shown a particularly friendly spirit. Why don’t you see more of her? She is moped to death.”“My dear boy,” she replied, wholly unruffled, “it is bad form to push one’s self forward where one is obviously not wanted. Forcing confidences is not in my line.” She sipped her coffee, and regarded him with interest over the rim of the cup. “I have asked her in here repeatedly, but she invariably pleads the same excuse; she cannot leave the children. I am beginning to think with you that the possession of children is a qualified blessing.”Dare made an unexpected exclamation.“Oh, damn the children!”He was so entirely sincere that he omitted to apologise. She smiled faintly, and continued her scrutiny of him and the sipping of her coffee.“Smoke,” she said, “and give me a cigarette. It assists the reasoning faculties.”He got up, and went round the table to her with his open case in his hand. When he had lighted her cigarette he returned to his seat.“I don’t wish to appear inhospitable—” she began...“I am leaving to-morrow,” he interrupted her shortly.She blew a cloud of smoke and followed it as it curled upward with her eyes. Then she looked again at Dare. He was leaning with his elbows on the tablecloth, his expression gloomily abstracted, his sombre eyes as they met hers conveying a mute resentment. Her attitude struck him as peculiarly unsympathetic.“You must not go in there again,” she said.He stared in some surprise.“I have no intention of doing so,” he answered. “I didn’t come down to fool about, but to gain information. I’ve learnt all I came to learn.”“And what use are you going to make of your information?” she asked.She could not, despite the utmost caution, disguise her strong curiosity. That he would rest satisfied in the inactive rôle of sympathiser she did not for a moment believe. He would want to do things, want to concern himself actively in what was after all no business of his. These lean men generally had a reserve of energy which broke forth at awkward seasons, and manifested itself in disquieting ways.He knocked the ash from his cigarette against the rim of a saucer, and refrained from looking at her as he replied.“I don’t know yet I suppose the immediate thing is to find Arnott, and discover what the fellow is really up to... I wish he were dead.”“That would certainly simplify matters,” she said. “But people don’t die merely to be obliging. You’ll find him very much alive, I expect.”He nodded in gloomy acquiescence.“And while you are ransacking the country for Arnott, what about your own affairs?” she inquired.“Oh! that’s all right. I’m entitled to leave.” He emitted a short laugh. “I believe you regard me in the light of an irresponsible person.”“I’ve met wiser people,” she allowed. “Quixotism is a form of benevolent insanity. Look at it how you will, your undertaking is quixotic in the last degree.”“So long as it is only that,” he returned, “I don’t see why you need set your face against it.”“It’s the futility of it,” she said, “that appeals to me. What you purpose doing is a job for the Supreme Court; and even the law cannot force a man to return to his wife against his will.”Dare made no answer to this. Had the position of affairs been simply as she believed it to be, he would not be undertaking this quest. An act of plain desertion would, as she had stated, have been a matter for the law to deal with. But the Arnotts’ case had to be kept out of the courts if possible for Pamela’s sake. He was very clear on that point. Pamela’s mistake in continuing to live with Arnott after her discovery of the truth made secrecy vitally important. That was a point which Arnott had probably taken into consideration.“You are a big fool, George,” she said; “but I love you for your folly. I suppose most women admire quixotic men. I am going to be amenable now. I’ll do my part, never fear. I’ll stick to Pamela like a limpet. There’s a difficult time ahead for her,—a storm of scandal to be faced; but we’ll win through. Thank heaven! no one has ever been able to fling any mud at her!”He gave her a quick look; she met it with a little uncertain laugh, and a light of indulgent affection in her eyes.“We are creatures of circumstance,” she added; “but we are not ruled by our passions,—not all of us.”To which Dare had nothing to say. He was very conscious at the moment of the dominating quality of his own passion; that he was not ruled by it was due rather to circumstances being against him than to any particular self-restraint. Had Pamela been willing to accept his proposal, he would have allowed no consideration to bar the way to their immediate marriage. As the case stood, however, his love was sufficiently strong and unselfish to move him to act as a disinterested friend who had at heart only an earnest desire to be of service to her. He meant to find Arnott, and persuade the man if possible to fulfil his obligation.The quickest means of discovering Arnott’s whereabouts, Carruthers suggested, and Dare considered the advice sound enough to follow, was to find Blanche Maitland, whose movements, if she were still in her professional capacity, would be easier to trace.“Though what on earth he expects to do when he does run across them,” Carruthers remarked to his wife, “beats me. Old George is off his balance.”“This business of sex is a big muddle,” he commented later, philosophising while he undressed, to his wife’s sleepy amusement. “Odd how it takes some fellows! ... Seems to knock the brains out of an average sensible chap. Never thought old George would go silly over somebody else’s wife. It’s in some fellows, that sort of thing.”He fussed about at the glass, and got into difficulties with his tie.“Jolly glad he didn’t develop a tender passion for you, old girl... Damn the thing!”The tie came away in his hand and was flung into a drawer. He banged the drawer to with noisy impatience.“It’s just giving rein to one’s feelings,” he said, “that is the cause of it. One can’t do that sort of thing,—it’s not decent. It’s like taking too much to drink because one enjoys the sensation of being drugged. We’ve got to observe the decencies of life; it’s a social obligation. Pretty mess we’d make of things, if every one yielded to his impulses.”He approached the bed and seated himself on the side of it and stared at his wife with a perturbed expression on his usually good-humoured face. She blinked an eyelid open, and returned his gaze with a kind of one-sided attention, and a drowsy smile that mocked his serious mood. Dickie in the rôle of moralist was unfamiliar and mildly diverting.“George isn’t yielding to his impulses,” she said; “he’s acting in direct opposition to them.”“He’s moonstruck over another man’s wife,” Carruthers returned; “and the other man is moonstruck over somebody else. What’s that but encouraging one’s fool sentimentalities? Some fellows enjoy messing about, and imagining themselves in love with every fresh face.”“The hunter’s instinct,” she murmured sleepily.Carruthers grunted.“It’s abnormal vanity,” he replied... “that, and suggestion... Just giving rein to unwholesome thoughts. I suppose, if I wanted to, I could work up that sort of feeling in respect to lots of women.”She opened both eyes at this, and regarded him with wide curiosity. Then she laughed.“Silly old duffer!” she said. “I don’t think George’s influence is good for you. You had better get to bed, and leave off talking nonsense. I want to go to sleep.”Carruthers got off the bed and repaired to his dressing-room, there to continue his reflections on the sex problem while he proceeded with the business of undressing.“It’s nosing about for the scent of these things,” he mused, taking off a shoe, and holding it in his hand with a contemplative eye upon it, as though the sight of this familiar object presented aspects hitherto unobserved. “If a man trains his mind to think along commonsense lines, his feelings don’t run amok.”He dropped the shoe on to the carpet, and focussed his attention on the pattern of his socks.“Gods! what a muddle it is!” he muttered... “A beastly lot of sentiment,—a beastly uncomfortable time of it,—and then,—reaction. And men go out of their way to tumble into these kind of messes. Hanged if I can understand it!”The following morning he surprised his wife with the inquiry:“Connie, were you ever in love before you met me?”“Lots of times,” she answered cheerfully.“How was it you never married one of the crowd?” he asked, a trifle nettled by the unexpectedly frank reply.“Because none of them asked me,” she replied with extraordinary candour.“Oh!” he said. He pondered this for a second or so. “I suppose you married me as a sort of substitute?” he added.She gave a little amused laugh.“Guess again,” she said.He went to her and put an awkward arm about her neck.“Tell me,” he entreated. “I’m a duffer at guessing.”“My reason for marrying you was precisely the same as yours for marrying me,” she answered provokingly, and pulled the encircling arm closer. Carruthers bent his head and kissed her.“There isn’t a better reason,” he affirmed in satisfied tones. “I guess we’re all right.”That before breakfast talk had the effect on Carruthers of inducing a kindly mood which inclined him to view Dare’s folly with greater toleration. He was even conscious of a certain sympathy with the man; his overnight impatience had moderated considerably. He threw out a few suggestions, intended to be helpful; and promised, without being asked, to keep Dare informed if anything transpired at that end.Carruthers’ cheerfulness had an irritating effect upon Dare. He had passed a sleepless night, kept awake by the worried thoughts which had harassed him throughout the long hours; by the passion of longing which possessed him, which refused, despite his utmost effort, to be subdued. He wanted Pamela, wanted her urgently,—and he was fool enough to be about to assist in bringing off a marriage between her and the villain who had spoilt her life. The irony of the situation struck him in its full absurdity. It was the consummation of a tragedy wearing comedy’s mask,—the enforced marriage of a man and woman who had ceased to care for one another, for the sake of the new generation which had arisen as the result of their one-time passion.Her decision was right, of course. It was the one unquestionably right step she had taken in the whole miserable affair. Because of its unanswerable equity he could only acquiesce.

Dare lunched alone with Mrs Carruthers. He was a little unpunctual; but she waited for him, and they sat down as soon as he came in. She did not ply him with questions; she kept her curiosity within bounds until the meal was well advanced. He was strangely quiet and preoccupied. She did not know what to make of his dejected silence. Mysteries were worrying to Connie Carruthers’ practical nature. It was the flavour of mystery which clung about the happenings next door that caused her, despite the warmth of her affection for Pamela, to avoid the house of late. She had the keen dislike of a healthy minded person for anything in the way of concealment. Discreet reticence was praiseworthy, but furtive silence bred distrust. His visit next door had, it seemed to her, given George Dare the air of a conspirator. Whatever shadow hung over the house had enveloped him in its gloom. It was absurd in her opinion for a man to allow his feeling for a married woman to swamp him in this fashion; it betrayed a lack of dignity and self-respect.

Dare did not wait for her to question him; he looked across at her towards the finish of the meal, and plunged of his own accord into the subject.

“That man, Arnott, is a double-dyed scoundrel,” he said. “He has left that poor girl without a word. She doesn’t know where he is even. He doesn’t write to her.”

“I suppose,” Mrs Carruthers observed calmly, “if he has eloped with some one else he would be little likely to write to her. Why, in the name of commonsense, did she confide her troubles to you? You will become obsessed with the thought of the divorce court, and carry a ring in your waistcoat pocket in anticipation of the decree absolute. I wish I had eaten my pen before I wrote that letter to you.”

She became aware of the offence in Dare’s look, and was instantly contrite.

“George,” she said, “I didn’t mean to be an unfeeling beast. But you ought not to have come down. You ought not to mix yourself up in the Arnott’s affairs. You can’t do any good.”

“Some one’s got to see her through,” he said. “You haven’t done much in the way of helping.”

“She doesn’t confide in me,” Mrs Carruthers retorted drily.

“Perhaps you haven’t given her the opportunity,” he returned. “I don’t think you have shown a particularly friendly spirit. Why don’t you see more of her? She is moped to death.”

“My dear boy,” she replied, wholly unruffled, “it is bad form to push one’s self forward where one is obviously not wanted. Forcing confidences is not in my line.” She sipped her coffee, and regarded him with interest over the rim of the cup. “I have asked her in here repeatedly, but she invariably pleads the same excuse; she cannot leave the children. I am beginning to think with you that the possession of children is a qualified blessing.”

Dare made an unexpected exclamation.

“Oh, damn the children!”

He was so entirely sincere that he omitted to apologise. She smiled faintly, and continued her scrutiny of him and the sipping of her coffee.

“Smoke,” she said, “and give me a cigarette. It assists the reasoning faculties.”

He got up, and went round the table to her with his open case in his hand. When he had lighted her cigarette he returned to his seat.

“I don’t wish to appear inhospitable—” she began...

“I am leaving to-morrow,” he interrupted her shortly.

She blew a cloud of smoke and followed it as it curled upward with her eyes. Then she looked again at Dare. He was leaning with his elbows on the tablecloth, his expression gloomily abstracted, his sombre eyes as they met hers conveying a mute resentment. Her attitude struck him as peculiarly unsympathetic.

“You must not go in there again,” she said.

He stared in some surprise.

“I have no intention of doing so,” he answered. “I didn’t come down to fool about, but to gain information. I’ve learnt all I came to learn.”

“And what use are you going to make of your information?” she asked.

She could not, despite the utmost caution, disguise her strong curiosity. That he would rest satisfied in the inactive rôle of sympathiser she did not for a moment believe. He would want to do things, want to concern himself actively in what was after all no business of his. These lean men generally had a reserve of energy which broke forth at awkward seasons, and manifested itself in disquieting ways.

He knocked the ash from his cigarette against the rim of a saucer, and refrained from looking at her as he replied.

“I don’t know yet I suppose the immediate thing is to find Arnott, and discover what the fellow is really up to... I wish he were dead.”

“That would certainly simplify matters,” she said. “But people don’t die merely to be obliging. You’ll find him very much alive, I expect.”

He nodded in gloomy acquiescence.

“And while you are ransacking the country for Arnott, what about your own affairs?” she inquired.

“Oh! that’s all right. I’m entitled to leave.” He emitted a short laugh. “I believe you regard me in the light of an irresponsible person.”

“I’ve met wiser people,” she allowed. “Quixotism is a form of benevolent insanity. Look at it how you will, your undertaking is quixotic in the last degree.”

“So long as it is only that,” he returned, “I don’t see why you need set your face against it.”

“It’s the futility of it,” she said, “that appeals to me. What you purpose doing is a job for the Supreme Court; and even the law cannot force a man to return to his wife against his will.”

Dare made no answer to this. Had the position of affairs been simply as she believed it to be, he would not be undertaking this quest. An act of plain desertion would, as she had stated, have been a matter for the law to deal with. But the Arnotts’ case had to be kept out of the courts if possible for Pamela’s sake. He was very clear on that point. Pamela’s mistake in continuing to live with Arnott after her discovery of the truth made secrecy vitally important. That was a point which Arnott had probably taken into consideration.

“You are a big fool, George,” she said; “but I love you for your folly. I suppose most women admire quixotic men. I am going to be amenable now. I’ll do my part, never fear. I’ll stick to Pamela like a limpet. There’s a difficult time ahead for her,—a storm of scandal to be faced; but we’ll win through. Thank heaven! no one has ever been able to fling any mud at her!”

He gave her a quick look; she met it with a little uncertain laugh, and a light of indulgent affection in her eyes.

“We are creatures of circumstance,” she added; “but we are not ruled by our passions,—not all of us.”

To which Dare had nothing to say. He was very conscious at the moment of the dominating quality of his own passion; that he was not ruled by it was due rather to circumstances being against him than to any particular self-restraint. Had Pamela been willing to accept his proposal, he would have allowed no consideration to bar the way to their immediate marriage. As the case stood, however, his love was sufficiently strong and unselfish to move him to act as a disinterested friend who had at heart only an earnest desire to be of service to her. He meant to find Arnott, and persuade the man if possible to fulfil his obligation.

The quickest means of discovering Arnott’s whereabouts, Carruthers suggested, and Dare considered the advice sound enough to follow, was to find Blanche Maitland, whose movements, if she were still in her professional capacity, would be easier to trace.

“Though what on earth he expects to do when he does run across them,” Carruthers remarked to his wife, “beats me. Old George is off his balance.”

“This business of sex is a big muddle,” he commented later, philosophising while he undressed, to his wife’s sleepy amusement. “Odd how it takes some fellows! ... Seems to knock the brains out of an average sensible chap. Never thought old George would go silly over somebody else’s wife. It’s in some fellows, that sort of thing.”

He fussed about at the glass, and got into difficulties with his tie.

“Jolly glad he didn’t develop a tender passion for you, old girl... Damn the thing!”

The tie came away in his hand and was flung into a drawer. He banged the drawer to with noisy impatience.

“It’s just giving rein to one’s feelings,” he said, “that is the cause of it. One can’t do that sort of thing,—it’s not decent. It’s like taking too much to drink because one enjoys the sensation of being drugged. We’ve got to observe the decencies of life; it’s a social obligation. Pretty mess we’d make of things, if every one yielded to his impulses.”

He approached the bed and seated himself on the side of it and stared at his wife with a perturbed expression on his usually good-humoured face. She blinked an eyelid open, and returned his gaze with a kind of one-sided attention, and a drowsy smile that mocked his serious mood. Dickie in the rôle of moralist was unfamiliar and mildly diverting.

“George isn’t yielding to his impulses,” she said; “he’s acting in direct opposition to them.”

“He’s moonstruck over another man’s wife,” Carruthers returned; “and the other man is moonstruck over somebody else. What’s that but encouraging one’s fool sentimentalities? Some fellows enjoy messing about, and imagining themselves in love with every fresh face.”

“The hunter’s instinct,” she murmured sleepily.

Carruthers grunted.

“It’s abnormal vanity,” he replied... “that, and suggestion... Just giving rein to unwholesome thoughts. I suppose, if I wanted to, I could work up that sort of feeling in respect to lots of women.”

She opened both eyes at this, and regarded him with wide curiosity. Then she laughed.

“Silly old duffer!” she said. “I don’t think George’s influence is good for you. You had better get to bed, and leave off talking nonsense. I want to go to sleep.”

Carruthers got off the bed and repaired to his dressing-room, there to continue his reflections on the sex problem while he proceeded with the business of undressing.

“It’s nosing about for the scent of these things,” he mused, taking off a shoe, and holding it in his hand with a contemplative eye upon it, as though the sight of this familiar object presented aspects hitherto unobserved. “If a man trains his mind to think along commonsense lines, his feelings don’t run amok.”

He dropped the shoe on to the carpet, and focussed his attention on the pattern of his socks.

“Gods! what a muddle it is!” he muttered... “A beastly lot of sentiment,—a beastly uncomfortable time of it,—and then,—reaction. And men go out of their way to tumble into these kind of messes. Hanged if I can understand it!”

The following morning he surprised his wife with the inquiry:

“Connie, were you ever in love before you met me?”

“Lots of times,” she answered cheerfully.

“How was it you never married one of the crowd?” he asked, a trifle nettled by the unexpectedly frank reply.

“Because none of them asked me,” she replied with extraordinary candour.

“Oh!” he said. He pondered this for a second or so. “I suppose you married me as a sort of substitute?” he added.

She gave a little amused laugh.

“Guess again,” she said.

He went to her and put an awkward arm about her neck.

“Tell me,” he entreated. “I’m a duffer at guessing.”

“My reason for marrying you was precisely the same as yours for marrying me,” she answered provokingly, and pulled the encircling arm closer. Carruthers bent his head and kissed her.

“There isn’t a better reason,” he affirmed in satisfied tones. “I guess we’re all right.”

That before breakfast talk had the effect on Carruthers of inducing a kindly mood which inclined him to view Dare’s folly with greater toleration. He was even conscious of a certain sympathy with the man; his overnight impatience had moderated considerably. He threw out a few suggestions, intended to be helpful; and promised, without being asked, to keep Dare informed if anything transpired at that end.

Carruthers’ cheerfulness had an irritating effect upon Dare. He had passed a sleepless night, kept awake by the worried thoughts which had harassed him throughout the long hours; by the passion of longing which possessed him, which refused, despite his utmost effort, to be subdued. He wanted Pamela, wanted her urgently,—and he was fool enough to be about to assist in bringing off a marriage between her and the villain who had spoilt her life. The irony of the situation struck him in its full absurdity. It was the consummation of a tragedy wearing comedy’s mask,—the enforced marriage of a man and woman who had ceased to care for one another, for the sake of the new generation which had arisen as the result of their one-time passion.

Her decision was right, of course. It was the one unquestionably right step she had taken in the whole miserable affair. Because of its unanswerable equity he could only acquiesce.

Chapter Twenty Three.Dare made inquiries in respect to the movements of the “Exotics,” the musical troupe with which Blanche Maitland had associated herself, and without much trouble traced them to Bloemfontein, and came up with them there.On the evening of his arrival in the town he attended a performance at which they were advertised to appear. He wondered as he took his seat in the hall whether he should find the girl he sought among the performers, or if she had severed her connection with the troupe in favour of a more private mode of life.He gazed round the well-filled room with the object of ascertaining whether Arnott was present. He was not. It was not very likely, Dare decided, that he would be; to show up at these performances would suit neither his inclination nor his policy. Still, there was just a chance.The room was very full. It was a popular entertainment at popular prices. Dare resolved to satisfy his curiosity and then leave; he could gain nothing from sitting through the entertainment, and the night was extraordinarily close. Fortunately the “Exotics” came on early in the performance. They were billed to appear again between the pictures toward the finish. Songs and character dances formed their repertoire.Dare looked expectantly towards the platform as they came on. There were nine of them, men and women; the ninth being the accompanist. She walked on behind the others, and went straight to the piano, a tall, striking-looking figure, clad in blue and silver which scintillated a cold brilliance where the lights caught the filmy draperies. It was Blanche Maitland. The calm, unsmiling face, set off by the stage finery, and crowned with the dark glossy hair, aglitter with sham diamonds, looked handsomer than he had ever seen it; but there was something repellant, he thought, in its cold, unyielding beauty, something unyouthful in her air of composed aloofness. She moved and acted like some handsome automaton. Not once did he observe her smile, or display interest in what she was doing. She was wonderfully inanimate. And yet her performance at the piano was extraordinarily skilful, far and away above he ordinary run of talent heard at these entertainments. One felt one wanted to hear her in something worthier of her gifts.Dare kept his seat until the performance came to an end; then he made his way behind, and sent his card in to her. He was not admitted to the dressing-rooms; but she came out and interviewed him in the passage, to the curious interest of one or two people who loitered there. She was manifestly surprised to see him, and pretended to have forgotten his name, and when and where they had met. He recalled the circumstances to her.“It was so long ago,” she said; “I had forgotten.”“I don’t call that kind,” he returned. “You see, I didn’t forget I saw you in Johannesburg last month.”“Yes!” She looked at him with increased interest. “We were there, of course. We have been to several places since. We are working down towards the coast.”“It is a change for you, this life,” he said. “Do you find it agreeable?”“Oh! I don’t know. It amused me at first. But I leave them at the coast. I came in as a stop-gap because their regular accompanist was ill.”Her voice sounded a little weary, her face, too, underneath the rouge, looked tired.“I’d like to call on you to-morrow, if I may,” he said, and paused expectantly.She hesitated, regarding him with vague suspicion in her eyes. Then she mentioned the boarding establishment at which they were staying, and gave a reluctant permission. It was not a fashionable hostelry; presumably the “Exotics” were not flourishing in respect to funds.“We might go for a drive,” he suggested, “if you care about it.”She acquiesced, but without enthusiasm. It occurred to Dare that her manner was a little distrustful. He smiled encouragingly.“That’s kind of you,” he observed. “I’m at loose ends in this place. Then I’ll be round about three, if that suits.”He did not feel quite satisfied when he parted from her that she would keep the engagement; but on the following afternoon when he motored up to the house, she came out dressed for the drive and met him at the gate. He was aware, as he helped her into the car, of several curious faces watching them from the doorway and behind the dingy curtains of the front room windows. The “Exotics” were frankly interested in the proceeding, and watched the car and its occupants with eager, envious eyes until they were out of sight.“I am glad you are giving up this life,” Dare remarked to his silent companion, as they spun along in the sunshine with the light wind in their faces. “It’s all very well in its way, I don’t doubt; but it’s just a trifle sordid, isn’t it?”“What is one to do?” she asked. “One must live. There isn’t a wide choice for women, as you know.”“That’s true,” he acknowledged, and was silent for a moment. “Why did you give up teaching?” he asked abruptly.She reddened and appeared distinctly annoyed.“That isn’t a vastly amusing, nor particularly lucrative form of earning a livelihood,” she returned with sarcasm. “How do you know I was teaching?”“I have recently been staying with the Carruthers,” he replied. “Mrs Carruthers spoke of you. I told her I had seen you in Johannesburg.”Blanche looked deliberately away.“Mrs Carruthers! Was she... She was my very kind friend formerly,” she remarked in an embarrassed, hesitating way. “I should be sorry if she thought less kindly of me now.”“Why should she?” he asked.She brought her face round again, and her eyes, steady and inquiring, met his fully.“I don’t think you are being quite sincere with me,” she said.Dare was unprepared for this direct attack. He felt at a decided disadvantage. She was much more shrewd than he had expected.“Now, I wonder why you should think that?” he asked.“Oh!” she exclaimed sharply. “Do you suppose I don’t know that while you were in Wynberg you heard me discussed? I’ve got relations there; they write to me. The things people say!”So already the gossip that was being circulated had reached her on her journeying. Dare scrutinised her closely, uncertain whether to treat her frankly as she seemed to wish, or to attempt to acquire the information he needed by less straightforward methods. In the end he resolved to be frank. Despite all that he had heard relative to her flight and her previous relations with Arnott, he had a strong persuasion that the stories concerning her were mostly lies. He discredited entirely the tale of her elopement. A girl does not run away with a man and leave him immediately to follow the kind of life she was at present leading. The fact that Arnott had been in Johannesburg at the same time that she was there called for some other explanation, he decided.“Don’t you think that perhaps you have your own indiscretion to blame for the stories that are being floated?” he asked.His question seemed to surprise her.“In what way should you say I have been indiscreet?” she inquired.“The manner of your leaving is an open secret,” he replied.“There is no secret about it,” she returned with some impatience. “I just went. In my opinion I was quite justified in acting as I did.”“Quite possibly you were,” he allowed. “But unfortunately Mr Arnott acted in the same ill-considered manner. When people do these things they must expect gossip.”She did not reply to this. Dare judged from her silence that she was fully informed as to the manner of Arnott’s leaving home. This seeming knowledge of the man’s movements shook his faith in her somewhat.“I suppose you think, with others, that circumstance had something to do with me?” she said presently.“I would only believe that,” he replied quietly, “if you told me so yourself.”She looked at him quickly, and then turned her face aside, unwilling that he should detect the shame in her eyes, and the gratitude that strove with other emotions at his unexpected answer. She knew so little of this man, who was but a chance acquaintance; and yet already he appeared inexplicably mixed up in her life, acquainted with all the most intimate details concerning her. It puzzled her why he should display this interest in her affairs. She felt that she ought to resent his unwarranted interference; and yet oddly she did not feel resentful. It was after all rather a relief to have some one with whom to discuss these matters, which were too private and difficult to speak of with other people. His knowledge of events seemed to constitute a reason, if not a right, for his discussion of them. But his intimacy with the Arnotts, and with Mrs Carruthers, inclined her to be somewhat on her guard with him.“I don’t know why you should be less ready than others to believe the reports that are spread,” she remarked. “Your knowledge of me is so slight. We’ve met—three times, is it?”“I am not judging from my knowledge of you, but from my knowledge of human nature,” he returned.She laughed cynically.“Has human nature revealed only its amiable qualities to you?” she asked.“Oh! no. Not by any means. But humanity is not without a moral sense. The baseness which some natures reveal is a form of degeneracy,—a sign of mental abnormality. In the case of man or woman, deliberate viciousness denotes a kink somewhere.”She pondered this.“Yes,” she allowed; “you are probably right. But there are a good many people with kinks. I may have a kink myself... I believe I have.”“Then straighten it out,” he advised.“Oh!” she said in a voice of weary irritation. “What’s the use of talking? Words are easy enough. It’s easy enough, perhaps, to act, as well as think, finely when life runs smoothly. But life is terribly difficult for some of us—and dull. The dulness, I think, is the worst.”She stared out at the sunny landscape with hard, dissatisfied eyes, and the bitterness in her voice increased as she continued:“I took up this kind of thing—touring and playing—because I thought I might find it brighter. It seemed so at first... the lights, and the people, and the noisy excitement of constant moving, constant change. Now I find that too unutterably dull. The tawdry dresses,—the limelight,—the sea of white faces, staring, always staring,—cold, unsympathetic, scarcely interested even. I hate them. I hate playing those ridiculous airs on timeless, indifferent pianos. I want something... I don’t know... I’m a fool to say all this. I hope you didn’t invite me to drive with you in the belief that you would find me an amusing companion?”“I invited you to drive with me,” he answered candidly, “because I wanted to talk to you on the subject which you, yourself, started. I am very anxious, for Mrs Arnott’s sake, as well as in your own interest, to put a stop to a scandal which is none the less harmful because I believe it to be a tissue of falsehoods. Since you have heard the scandal, I am spared the unpleasant task of paining you further by repeating it. If you choose, I believe you can help me in stopping the thing. Will you tell me, if you can, where Mr Arnott is to be got at?”“How should I know?” she asked, flushing.“I thought you might know,” he answered, unconvinced by her words of her ignorance as to Arnott’s whereabouts. “He was in Johannesburg when you were there. I could have settled this matter then, had I known of it. But I’ve only just heard the talk. I want to see him. He ought to be informed of the report that is going about, which his own indiscretion is mainly responsible for. I think, if he knew, he would see the wisdom of putting an end to it.”“I don’t,” she replied unexpectedly. “I don’t think it would make the least impression on him.”“Oh, come!” he said, surprised. “What grounds have you for supposing that?”She glanced at the chauffeur’s impassive back, and from it into Dare’s curious, perplexed face.“Do you think this quite the place for discussing these matters?” she asked.Dare was obliged to admit the reasonableness of her remonstrance. Although they had spoken in lowered voices, they could not be positive that no part of their talk reached the driver’s ears.“We’ll have tea somewhere,” he said. “Then we will drive out into the country where we can get out and walk.”He leaned forward and gave the chauffeur his directions. When he turned to the girl again he was conscious of a new reserve which betrayed itself in her manner. She raised no objection to his arrangements; but a marked constraint showed in her speech. She fell back more and more upon silence and left the talking to Dare.

Dare made inquiries in respect to the movements of the “Exotics,” the musical troupe with which Blanche Maitland had associated herself, and without much trouble traced them to Bloemfontein, and came up with them there.

On the evening of his arrival in the town he attended a performance at which they were advertised to appear. He wondered as he took his seat in the hall whether he should find the girl he sought among the performers, or if she had severed her connection with the troupe in favour of a more private mode of life.

He gazed round the well-filled room with the object of ascertaining whether Arnott was present. He was not. It was not very likely, Dare decided, that he would be; to show up at these performances would suit neither his inclination nor his policy. Still, there was just a chance.

The room was very full. It was a popular entertainment at popular prices. Dare resolved to satisfy his curiosity and then leave; he could gain nothing from sitting through the entertainment, and the night was extraordinarily close. Fortunately the “Exotics” came on early in the performance. They were billed to appear again between the pictures toward the finish. Songs and character dances formed their repertoire.

Dare looked expectantly towards the platform as they came on. There were nine of them, men and women; the ninth being the accompanist. She walked on behind the others, and went straight to the piano, a tall, striking-looking figure, clad in blue and silver which scintillated a cold brilliance where the lights caught the filmy draperies. It was Blanche Maitland. The calm, unsmiling face, set off by the stage finery, and crowned with the dark glossy hair, aglitter with sham diamonds, looked handsomer than he had ever seen it; but there was something repellant, he thought, in its cold, unyielding beauty, something unyouthful in her air of composed aloofness. She moved and acted like some handsome automaton. Not once did he observe her smile, or display interest in what she was doing. She was wonderfully inanimate. And yet her performance at the piano was extraordinarily skilful, far and away above he ordinary run of talent heard at these entertainments. One felt one wanted to hear her in something worthier of her gifts.

Dare kept his seat until the performance came to an end; then he made his way behind, and sent his card in to her. He was not admitted to the dressing-rooms; but she came out and interviewed him in the passage, to the curious interest of one or two people who loitered there. She was manifestly surprised to see him, and pretended to have forgotten his name, and when and where they had met. He recalled the circumstances to her.

“It was so long ago,” she said; “I had forgotten.”

“I don’t call that kind,” he returned. “You see, I didn’t forget I saw you in Johannesburg last month.”

“Yes!” She looked at him with increased interest. “We were there, of course. We have been to several places since. We are working down towards the coast.”

“It is a change for you, this life,” he said. “Do you find it agreeable?”

“Oh! I don’t know. It amused me at first. But I leave them at the coast. I came in as a stop-gap because their regular accompanist was ill.”

Her voice sounded a little weary, her face, too, underneath the rouge, looked tired.

“I’d like to call on you to-morrow, if I may,” he said, and paused expectantly.

She hesitated, regarding him with vague suspicion in her eyes. Then she mentioned the boarding establishment at which they were staying, and gave a reluctant permission. It was not a fashionable hostelry; presumably the “Exotics” were not flourishing in respect to funds.

“We might go for a drive,” he suggested, “if you care about it.”

She acquiesced, but without enthusiasm. It occurred to Dare that her manner was a little distrustful. He smiled encouragingly.

“That’s kind of you,” he observed. “I’m at loose ends in this place. Then I’ll be round about three, if that suits.”

He did not feel quite satisfied when he parted from her that she would keep the engagement; but on the following afternoon when he motored up to the house, she came out dressed for the drive and met him at the gate. He was aware, as he helped her into the car, of several curious faces watching them from the doorway and behind the dingy curtains of the front room windows. The “Exotics” were frankly interested in the proceeding, and watched the car and its occupants with eager, envious eyes until they were out of sight.

“I am glad you are giving up this life,” Dare remarked to his silent companion, as they spun along in the sunshine with the light wind in their faces. “It’s all very well in its way, I don’t doubt; but it’s just a trifle sordid, isn’t it?”

“What is one to do?” she asked. “One must live. There isn’t a wide choice for women, as you know.”

“That’s true,” he acknowledged, and was silent for a moment. “Why did you give up teaching?” he asked abruptly.

She reddened and appeared distinctly annoyed.

“That isn’t a vastly amusing, nor particularly lucrative form of earning a livelihood,” she returned with sarcasm. “How do you know I was teaching?”

“I have recently been staying with the Carruthers,” he replied. “Mrs Carruthers spoke of you. I told her I had seen you in Johannesburg.”

Blanche looked deliberately away.

“Mrs Carruthers! Was she... She was my very kind friend formerly,” she remarked in an embarrassed, hesitating way. “I should be sorry if she thought less kindly of me now.”

“Why should she?” he asked.

She brought her face round again, and her eyes, steady and inquiring, met his fully.

“I don’t think you are being quite sincere with me,” she said.

Dare was unprepared for this direct attack. He felt at a decided disadvantage. She was much more shrewd than he had expected.

“Now, I wonder why you should think that?” he asked.

“Oh!” she exclaimed sharply. “Do you suppose I don’t know that while you were in Wynberg you heard me discussed? I’ve got relations there; they write to me. The things people say!”

So already the gossip that was being circulated had reached her on her journeying. Dare scrutinised her closely, uncertain whether to treat her frankly as she seemed to wish, or to attempt to acquire the information he needed by less straightforward methods. In the end he resolved to be frank. Despite all that he had heard relative to her flight and her previous relations with Arnott, he had a strong persuasion that the stories concerning her were mostly lies. He discredited entirely the tale of her elopement. A girl does not run away with a man and leave him immediately to follow the kind of life she was at present leading. The fact that Arnott had been in Johannesburg at the same time that she was there called for some other explanation, he decided.

“Don’t you think that perhaps you have your own indiscretion to blame for the stories that are being floated?” he asked.

His question seemed to surprise her.

“In what way should you say I have been indiscreet?” she inquired.

“The manner of your leaving is an open secret,” he replied.

“There is no secret about it,” she returned with some impatience. “I just went. In my opinion I was quite justified in acting as I did.”

“Quite possibly you were,” he allowed. “But unfortunately Mr Arnott acted in the same ill-considered manner. When people do these things they must expect gossip.”

She did not reply to this. Dare judged from her silence that she was fully informed as to the manner of Arnott’s leaving home. This seeming knowledge of the man’s movements shook his faith in her somewhat.

“I suppose you think, with others, that circumstance had something to do with me?” she said presently.

“I would only believe that,” he replied quietly, “if you told me so yourself.”

She looked at him quickly, and then turned her face aside, unwilling that he should detect the shame in her eyes, and the gratitude that strove with other emotions at his unexpected answer. She knew so little of this man, who was but a chance acquaintance; and yet already he appeared inexplicably mixed up in her life, acquainted with all the most intimate details concerning her. It puzzled her why he should display this interest in her affairs. She felt that she ought to resent his unwarranted interference; and yet oddly she did not feel resentful. It was after all rather a relief to have some one with whom to discuss these matters, which were too private and difficult to speak of with other people. His knowledge of events seemed to constitute a reason, if not a right, for his discussion of them. But his intimacy with the Arnotts, and with Mrs Carruthers, inclined her to be somewhat on her guard with him.

“I don’t know why you should be less ready than others to believe the reports that are spread,” she remarked. “Your knowledge of me is so slight. We’ve met—three times, is it?”

“I am not judging from my knowledge of you, but from my knowledge of human nature,” he returned.

She laughed cynically.

“Has human nature revealed only its amiable qualities to you?” she asked.

“Oh! no. Not by any means. But humanity is not without a moral sense. The baseness which some natures reveal is a form of degeneracy,—a sign of mental abnormality. In the case of man or woman, deliberate viciousness denotes a kink somewhere.”

She pondered this.

“Yes,” she allowed; “you are probably right. But there are a good many people with kinks. I may have a kink myself... I believe I have.”

“Then straighten it out,” he advised.

“Oh!” she said in a voice of weary irritation. “What’s the use of talking? Words are easy enough. It’s easy enough, perhaps, to act, as well as think, finely when life runs smoothly. But life is terribly difficult for some of us—and dull. The dulness, I think, is the worst.”

She stared out at the sunny landscape with hard, dissatisfied eyes, and the bitterness in her voice increased as she continued:

“I took up this kind of thing—touring and playing—because I thought I might find it brighter. It seemed so at first... the lights, and the people, and the noisy excitement of constant moving, constant change. Now I find that too unutterably dull. The tawdry dresses,—the limelight,—the sea of white faces, staring, always staring,—cold, unsympathetic, scarcely interested even. I hate them. I hate playing those ridiculous airs on timeless, indifferent pianos. I want something... I don’t know... I’m a fool to say all this. I hope you didn’t invite me to drive with you in the belief that you would find me an amusing companion?”

“I invited you to drive with me,” he answered candidly, “because I wanted to talk to you on the subject which you, yourself, started. I am very anxious, for Mrs Arnott’s sake, as well as in your own interest, to put a stop to a scandal which is none the less harmful because I believe it to be a tissue of falsehoods. Since you have heard the scandal, I am spared the unpleasant task of paining you further by repeating it. If you choose, I believe you can help me in stopping the thing. Will you tell me, if you can, where Mr Arnott is to be got at?”

“How should I know?” she asked, flushing.

“I thought you might know,” he answered, unconvinced by her words of her ignorance as to Arnott’s whereabouts. “He was in Johannesburg when you were there. I could have settled this matter then, had I known of it. But I’ve only just heard the talk. I want to see him. He ought to be informed of the report that is going about, which his own indiscretion is mainly responsible for. I think, if he knew, he would see the wisdom of putting an end to it.”

“I don’t,” she replied unexpectedly. “I don’t think it would make the least impression on him.”

“Oh, come!” he said, surprised. “What grounds have you for supposing that?”

She glanced at the chauffeur’s impassive back, and from it into Dare’s curious, perplexed face.

“Do you think this quite the place for discussing these matters?” she asked.

Dare was obliged to admit the reasonableness of her remonstrance. Although they had spoken in lowered voices, they could not be positive that no part of their talk reached the driver’s ears.

“We’ll have tea somewhere,” he said. “Then we will drive out into the country where we can get out and walk.”

He leaned forward and gave the chauffeur his directions. When he turned to the girl again he was conscious of a new reserve which betrayed itself in her manner. She raised no objection to his arrangements; but a marked constraint showed in her speech. She fell back more and more upon silence and left the talking to Dare.

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