lack horse.

I did not instantly rise. I stared at her. "YOU!" I said.

She looked at me steadily. "Me," she said

I did not trouble about any civilities. I stood up and asked point blank
a question that came into my head.

"Whose horse is that?" I said.

She looked me in the eyes. "Carnaby's," she answered.

"How did you get here--this way?"

"The wall's down."

"Down? Already?"

"A great bit of it between the plantations."

"And you rode through, and got here by chance?"

"I saw you yesterday. And I rode over to see you." I had now come close
to her, and stood looking up into her face.

"I'm a mere vestige," I said.

She made no answer, but remained regarding me steadfastly with a curious
air of proprietorship.

"You know I'm the living survivor now of the great smash. I'm rolling
and dropping down through all the scaffolding of the social system....
It's all a chance whether I roll out free at the bottom, or go down a
crack into the darkness out of sight for a year or two."

"The sun," she remarked irrelevantly, "has burnt you.... I'm getting
down."

She swung herself down into my arms, and stood beside me face to face.

"Where's Cothope?" she asked.

"Gone."

Her eyes flitted to the pavilion and back to me. We stood close
together, extraordinarily intimate, and extraordinarily apart.

"I've never seen this cottage of yours," she said, "and I want to."

She flung the bridle of her horse round the veranda post, and I helped
her tie it.

"Did you get what you went for to Africa?" she asked.

"No," I said, "I lost my ship."

"And that lost everything?"

"Everything."

She walked before me into the living-room of the chalet, and I saw that
she gripped her riding-whip very tightly in her hand. She looked about
her for a moment,--and then at me.

"It's comfortable," she remarked.

Our eyes met in a conversation very different from the one upon our
lips. A sombre glow surrounded us, drew us together; an unwonted shyness
kept us apart. She roused herself, after an instant's pause, to examine
my furniture.

"You have chintz curtains. I thought men were too feckless to have
curtains without a woman. But, of course, your aunt did that! And a
couch and a brass fender, and--is that a pianola? That is your desk.
I thought men's desks were always untidy, and covered with dust and
tobacco ash."

She flitted to my colour prints and my little case of books. Then she
went to the pianola. I watc