. "It
wasn't your fault in the least, and it was awfully good of you to avoid
him."--Whack--whack.

The man started a little as she spoke and came across the road towards
them.

Meg raised a flushed face from her castigation of William, but the
pretty colour faded quickly when she saw who the stranger was.

"Meg!" he exclaimed. "_You!_"

For a tense moment they stared at one another, while the children stared
at the stranger. He was certainly a handsome man; melancholy,
"interesting." Pale, with regular features and sleepy, smallish eyes set
very near together.

"If you knew how I have searched for you," he said.

His voice was his great charm, and would have made his fortune on the
stage. It could convey so much, could be so tender and beseeching, so
charged with deepest sadness, so musical always.

"Your search cannot have been very arduous," Meg answered drily. "There
has never been any mystery about my movements." And she looked him
straight in the face.

"At first, I was afraid ... I did not try to find you."

"You were well-advised."

"Who is 'at sahib?" little Fay interrupted impatiently. "Let us go
home." She had no use for any sahib who ignored her presence.

"Yes, we'd better be getting on," Meg said hurriedly, and seized the
handle of the pram.

But he stood right in their path.

"You were very cruel," the musical voice went on. "You never seemed to
give a thought to all _I_ was suffering."

Meg met the sleepy eyes, that used to thrill her very soul, with a look
of scornful amusement in hers that was certainly the very last
expression he had ever expected to see in them.

She had always dreaded this moment.

Realising the power this man had exercised over her, she always feared
that should she meet him again the old glamour would surround him; the
old domination be reasserted. She forgot that in five years one's
standards change.

Now that she did meet him she discovered that he held no bonds with
which to bind her. That what she had dreaded was a chimera. The real
Walter Brooke, the moment he appeared in the flesh, destroyed the image
memory had set up; and Meg straightened her slender shoulders as though
a heavy burden had dropped from them.

The whole thing passed like a flash.

"You were very cruel," he repeated.

"There is no use going into all that," Meg answered in a cheerful,
matter-of-fact tone. "Good-bye, Mr. Brooke. We are most grateful to you
for not running over Willia