as
unwelcome.

"Did you?" she repeated with insistence. He uttered a brief laugh.
"All right, I didn't. And that's all there is to it."

"Thank you, partner," she returned with spirit, and changed the
subject. But her heart had given a little throb of dismay within
her. Full well she knew the reason of his reticence.

They parted before the _stoep_, he leading her animal away, she
going within to attend to the many duties of her household.

She filled her thoughts with these resolutely during the morning,
but in spite of this it was the longest morning she had ever known.

She was at length restlessly superintending the laying of lunch
when Joe hurried in with the news that a _baas_ was waiting on the
_stoep_ round the corner to see her. The news startled her. She
had heard no sounds of arrival, nor had Burke returned. For a few
moments she was conscious of a longing to escape that was almost
beyond her, control, then with a sharp effort she commanded herself
and went out.

Turning the corner of the bungalow, she came upon him very
suddenly, standing upright against one of the pillar-supports,
awaiting her. He was alone, and a little throb of thankfulness
went through her that this was so. She knew in that moment that
she could not have borne to meet him for the first time in Burke's
presence.

She was trembling as she went forward, but the instant their hands
met her agitation fell away from her, for she suddenly realized
that he was trembling also.

No conventional words came to her lips. How could she ever be
conventional with Guy? And it was Guy--Guy in the flesh--who stood
before her, so little altered in appearance from the Guy she had
known five years before that the thought flashed through her mind
that he looked only as if he had come through a sharp illness. She
had expected far worse, though she realized now what Burke had
meant when he had said that whatever resemblance had once existed
between them, they were now no longer alike. He had not developed
as she had expected. In Burke, she seemed to see the promise of
Guy's youth. But Guy himself had not fulfilled that promise. He
had degenerated. He had proved himself a failure. And yet he did
not look coarsened or hardened by vice. He only looked, to her
pitiful, inexperienced eyes, as if he had been ravaged by some
sickness, as if he had suffered intensely and were doomed to suffer
as long as he lived.

That was the first impr