heart whispered, almost without her consciousness,
"cannot you with your fairness reward him for his work by soothing
away the memory so that the refuge is no longer needed?..."

A little later, as they all prepared to ride home, she saw how
resolutely he took his place with the engineer, and hastened on ahead,
quenching even Diana by the stoniness of his mien.

XIII

A DECISION THAT FAILED

As Carew sat outside his hut that evening smoking a solitary pipe, two
thoughts seemed to fill his mind. The one that he had told Meryl he
would be pleased to visit the temple ruins with her; the other the
warning unconsciously conveyed in Diana's raillery, reminding him that
he was in danger of straying from the rigid pathway he had chosen of
unsociable aloofness, and therefore in a measure, perchance, inviting
trouble.

But of course he need not go. A polite message by Stanley, or a call
as he rode past perhaps, already starting on some convenient
engagement. Yet as he sat on he knew it was not entirely his wish to
resort to either subterfuge. Why, after all, should he not go with her
just once, and no doubt Diana also, and tell them a little about the
mysterious walls?

He pulled hard at his pipe, staring into the darkness. Why not go and
get it over, instead of troubling to send an excuse? Surely that were
the simpler plan? One moment he thought he would, and the next he
found himself shrinking unaccountably, warned again by Diana's chaff.
He knew quite well she was right. He was a man, or a bear if she
preferred it, with two faces; but the trouble was that she should so
thoroughly have grasped the fact. He had only intended to show one
face, the uninviting, frigid one; and yet unconsciously she had won
from him more than one glimpse of the other.

And if he unbent so far as to act as their escort to the ruins, he was
yielding still further to an atmosphere of friendliness he had
forsworn.

He turned in at last, still in indecision, but the next morning he
said he would not go.

So Meryl waited a little forlornly through the morning hours. It was
unusually cool for Zimbabwe, the hot sun being hidden by grey clouds,
and she knew no question of heat could possibly be detaining him. She
had hoped he would call for her about eleven and then come back to
lunch; but the morning wore on, and no tall figure in khaki strode out
from the clearing where the police camp stood.

Neither did the afternoon bring any word