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manipulative proportions.
    “An Alsatian. She has three of them—brutes, but clever watchdogs. When houses are spaced so far apart you need them. I like man-size dogs.”
    He sounded r umin ative , as though visualizing a house of his own, a dog and ... a pipe or a wife?
    Now, he was separating her fingers, and abstractedly rubbing the pad of his thumb over each nail. Presently, the thumb lowered and twisted the thin platinum band which he had this morning substituted for his signet ring. Lindsey held herself completely rigid, willing herself not to pay any attention to his touch, not to think, not to feel. The merest twitch of a nostril could give one away.
    A discreet tap at the door.
    “Pardon me, sir ... madam.” The European clerk bowed. “The manager has asked me to make sure that your call came through all right.”
    “Perfectly, thanks.” Stuart got up. “Ready for dinner, Lindsey?”
    As soon as breakfast was over next morning they left Cape Town. The trunks were going separately, by rail, but the lighter cases were stacked in the back of the car together with a picnic hamper and other necessities for a three day sight-seeing journey.
    That ride from west t o east of the Cape provided an unforgettable series of experiences for Lindsey. The mountains shutting out the sea, the Dutch houses with their gleaming white gables and dark thatched roofs, the vineyards and orchards, the startling new green of stately oaks, and gardens heavy with the rich foliage and dazzling bloom of more exotic trees and shrubs. Palms—to Lindsey there was no tree more fascinating or varied—were huge-girthed and thickly-leaved, and aloes, with grotesque rake-like roots and writhing trunks which seemed to have gone to endless trouble to sprout those absurd little heads, peered out between thorns and mimosa.
    The sunsets, whether seen above the roofs of a homely old town or from some eminence overlooking wheatlands or a tumbling river, blinded with their brilliance of coloring, and the dawns came up flamingo and lavender that changed too fast into the sapphire of daylight.
    By Monday morning, when they began the last lap to Port Acland, Lindsey was sated with beauty and sunshine. In such a country, she thought, life could not help but become full and completely happy.
    “We’ll keep going today,” Stuart said. “With luck, we should reach Port Acland by mid-afte rn oon. Will you be glad to get there?”
    She nodded. “These days have been lovely, but it’ll be good to settle for a bit.”
    “You’re right. That night we first met on the Perthshire seems worlds away. Incredible, isn’t it, to t hink that tonight we shall have a roof of our own?”

 
    CHAPTER THREE
    PORT ACLAND, a seaside resort that was fast developing a wide industrial area at its eastern end, lay like a misty jewel on the rim of Acland Bay. The climate, sunny but tempered by winds and seasonal rains, had, in the course of years, appropriately attracted more English than other nationalities, tho ugh there was a strong Afrikaans element in some parts of the town.
    Beechwood, the residential area which began just behind the Esplanade and stretched back into the veld, possessed its quota of Dutch architecture, but mainly the houses showed a disc riminating departure from the accepted Cape styles. Practically all of them were single-storied.
    The house Stuart had rented lay back from a wide, grass edged road shaded by giant blue gums and pollard pines. The stoep, elaborately arched and packed with tub ferns and palms, stretched right round the house like a tropical veranda, so that at any tim e of the day one could follow the sun.
    The double doors stood open, displaying still more potted plants on tall teak stands set against the semicircular wall of a spacious, tiled hall, from which opened many blackwood doors with brass handles.
    “It’s huge ,” exclaimed Lindsey.
    “Quite a bungalow,” agreed Stuart. “In England they’d build half a dozen villas on