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your pardon, that’s horribly abrupt, but I was just wondering. Please forgive me, I know I’m rude.”

“I don’t mind (that sort of rudeness,” she added to herself.) “I’m eighteen.”

“I’m over twenty-two—well, I had the advantage of beginning young. I remember once in New Zealand, in a timber camp, the boss went for me because he said I’d been monkeying with an axe, and spoiling its edge, you know. Well, I hadn’t. If I had owned up to having done it, I daresay I should have got off lightly, but the things he said put my back up, and I wouldn’t. Instead, I told him what I thought of him.” Tony laughed a little. “I suppose that was the most scientific thrashing I ever had, but it was well worth it. You get solid moral satisfaction out of a thing like that.”

Pamela had winced and caught her under-lip in ber teeth. Now she said steadily, not looking at him: “You see, that shows what I mean. You’ve had your bad time, it’s your turn to have a good one now, in England. I’ve never had any bad time at all. It’s fair that I should take my turn.”

Tony swung round as they walked, and the concentrated bitterness in his tone startled them both.

“My dear girl, things don’t go by fairness. They never did, and they never will. If I have only one eye I’m handicapped against you, but will you put out yours to make it fair? The fact that I had a rough time once (it’s over now, by the way, I get along as comfortably as anybody) is no reason why you should leave your home and pig it as a companion. It’s the maddest thing I ever heard of.”

“But it’s not my home,” said Pamela, exasperated to bluntness. “It’s really stupid of you not to see.”

“I never shall see from that point of view. Nothing could make Trent Stoke mine. I wasn’t born for a home—