"I really don't think I shall care particularly. Probably, if we met
again here, there would be some jar to our comradeship--I may call it
that, I suppose?"

"Which is equivalent to saying that good-bye in most cases, and always in
cases such as ours, is a, little tragical, because we can never meet
quite the same again."

She bowed her head, but did not reply. Presently she glanced up at him
kindly. "What would you give to have back the past you had before you
lost your illusions, before you had--trouble?"

"I do not want it back. I am not really disillusionised. I think that
we should not make our own personal experience a law unto the world. I
believe in the world in spite--of trouble. You might have said trouble
with a woman--I should not have minded." He was smoking now, and the
clouds twisted about his face so that only his eyes looked through
earnestly. "A woman always makes laws from her personal experience. She
has not the faculty of generalisation--I fancy that's the word to use."

She rose now with a little shaking motion, one hand at her belt, and
rested a shoulder against a pillar of the veranda. He rose also at once,
and said, touching her hand respectfully with his finger tips: "We may be
sorry one day that we did not believe in ourselves more."

"Oh, no," she said, turning and smiling at him, "I think not. You will
be in England hard at work, I here hard at living; our interests will lie
far apart. I am certain about it all. We might have been what my cousin
calls 'trusty pals'--no more."