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uncomfortable by the minute. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said at last. ‘I had no right—’
    ‘Deborah, I warn you, defeat me in argument if you must, but don’t patronise me by apologising for doing so!’
    She was astonished. ‘It wasn’t exactly an argument and, even if it was, that doesn’t give one a licence to be rude. I expect I don’t understand how someone like you feels about—about people who don’t get the hang of things very easily.’
    ‘Are you by any chance referring to yourself?’
    She nodded, waiting for the blow to fall when he agreed with her. His laughter at first shocked her and then made her more than a little indignant. ‘I can’t help it if I can’t compete with you—’ she began.
    ‘You don’t have to,’ he said.
    She drew herself up. ‘I wouldn’t want to bore you, Mr. Derwent.’
    ‘There’s not much danger of that!’ The rueful slant to his mouth brought the excitement rushing through her veins again. ‘If I didn’t think you’d get hurt, I’d have a lot of time for you, Miss Day. But I think we want different things in that direction, so be grateful I’m still sufficiently human to consider your tender feelings enough to allow you to escape my attentions.’
    She wasn’t at all grateful! A storm of rebellion shook her that he should be able to dismiss her so easily. ‘You flatter yourself!’ she said, her tone as dry as his. ‘Have you forgotten that I was engaged to Ian until quite recently?’
    ‘No.’ He didn’t seem inclined to remember it now.
    ‘Well then?’ she prompted him.
    ‘I find it very difficult to take that particular love affair seriously,’ he murmured. T could make you forget all about that young jackanapes in a few minutes if I chose.’ He turned to face her. ‘Shall I choose, Deborah?’
    That was putting the ball in her court with a vengeance, and she took fright as she suspected he had known she would. She met his eyes with as much equanimity as she could muster, and, as their eyes met, she saw a flash of disappointment in his, but it was gone so quickly that she wondered if she had imagined it.
    ‘I might not be the easy game you suppose,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t find it as easy to turn my head as you think. Ian isn’t the only man I’ve ever known! I’ve always been able to pick and choose—’
    ‘Among the boys,’ he interrupted her. ‘I’m sure you had them hanging on your every word and enjoyed every moment of it. I’m not a boy—I doubt if I ever was in that way!—and there are some experiences it’s better for a sweet young girl not to have had.’
    She turned on him then, angry at the picture of her he had conjured up with such mocking insistence.
    ‘You’re far too conceited to appeal to me I’ she claimed. ‘I wouldn’t fall in love with you if you were the last man left on earth!’
    She stopped at a stall that was selling some of the carpets made by the nomadic Qashgai tribes, appalled to see among their number a gaudy representation of an American pop star. The proprietor hastily covered it up with a pile of more traditionally designed rugs and it vanished from view.
    ‘Did you see that?’ Deborah demanded, incensed, her quarrel with Roger Derwent temporarily forgotten.
    Roger’s lips quirked momentarily. ‘I think you’re too young to fall in love with anyone,’ he said. ‘You and Maxine will make a fine pair!’
    Deborah dragged herself away from the shop with difficulty. They had come to the end of the bazaar and were faced with an unsavoury-looking passage that could have led anywhere. Roger merely glanced down it, smiled at someone he knew, and turned to the left down another passage, lit by a single naked electric light bulb, that was completely empty except for a group of schoolboys playing some kind of football against its walls.
    ‘It isn’t far now,’ Roger encouraged her. Toil did say you wanted to live in the centre of the city,’ he added.
    ‘Do people really live down