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Charles lit a cigarette and reversed. And now for the repetitive farce with Sonya. A farce, because neither of them ever lost their head. For all the sultry promise of her body, Sonya was cold and hard as iron.

PHIL’S enquiries at the shipping office elicited the news that passenger accommodation from Lagos to England was limited. Tentatively she booked a berth three weeks ahead and begged to be advised of a possible cancellation on an earlier boat. She had driven the box-car into town to pick up some supplies which Charles had heard were awaiting collection in one of the wharves, so it was with a sense of relief in having a job to do that she left the shipping office and made for the Customs Road.

Her instructions were to hand over the advice note and sit tight till the stuff was packed into the car. She chose a patch of shade in front of the sheds and called a uniformed native to take the white slip to a Eurasian foreman.

She became conscious of being scrutinized. A small man wearing the inescapable khaki drill and a grubby top, stood in the full glare of the sun, inspecting the wording on the wagon. Aware that she noticed him, he approached and tipped his helmet.

“Excuse me, miss,” in tones which she believed to be Lancastrian. “I see you’re from the Institute of Tropical Hygiene. I’ve been trying to find a taxi to take me there.”

She smiled. “When my load is aboard I shall be driving back. Maybe you’d like to come along?”

“I certainly would. Can I tickle up these blighters for you?”

His tickling up had effect. The precious cargo of apparatus and chemicals was stowed and he got in beside her.

“Clem Pringle’s the name,” he said, as she started the engine. '“Adventurer, of no fixed abode.”

She had met others like him in West Africa; men who had come out on short contact and either gone partially native or been nailed here by easy money. Their usual epitaph was a mountain of empty whisky bottles. She wondered if he had absorbed a germ into his system, though the patients mostly appeared worried and thin.

“I had treatment from Dr. Metcalfe in Freetown,” he answered her silent questions, “and I thought, seeing I’m here, it was time to show some gratitude. I trade for animals and sell ’em to zoos. I’ve come to buy a white rhino from a chap in Port Andrew, but I’ve got a lot of surplus snakes and monkeys. Think Dr. Metcalfe could do with ’em?”

“Our zoo is fairly full.”

“Pity to tip ’em into the sea,” he said.

They were following a burgundy car which glittered in the sunshine.

“That’s a lordly turn-out,” he commented. “Who is she?”

“Madame Levalle, widow of the Doctor Levalle who started the Institute.”

After that Phil ignored her garrulous companion, for she was sure that Sonya, having recognized jeep and driver, had purposely slowed. From the opposite direction ambled a mule team so Phil had to crawl and inhale oil fumes from the heated engine and swelter with the heat of the sun through the thin metal roof.

The mules clopped past and the road was clear. Phil pulled out. She was nearly level with Sonya and preparing to smile in passing when the saloon car leapt ahead. Dazed with heat and restricted breathing, Phil must have jarred the wheel. Her bumper grazed Sonya’s rear mudguard. “Bitch!” ejaculated Mr. Pringle.

Phil set her teeth and went on driving. Sonya’s car sped out of sight, and when they reached the Institute it was parked outside the main entrance. Phil halted the box-car just behind it.

She was about to ask Mr. Pringle to take a seat in the hall when Charles, followed by Sonya, emerged from his office.

“Are you all right, Phil?” he queried at once.

“I told you she was not hurt,” Sonya said tartly. “Her wretched driving has badly scratched my car. I am amazed that you should allow her to drive the jeep, Charles.”

“I haven’t yet got at what happened,” he returned. “Take your time, Phil.”

His perturbed frown cooled Phil’s anger. Sonya did not know that she was sailing in three weeks or she would not have fabricated the incident. None of it mattered.

“It was my fault,” she began.

“The hell it was!” burst out the little north-countryman. “I was beside the young lady. The red car was meandering about, asking for a dent. We tried to pass and she shot forward. The poor driver, Madame, was you!”

“Is this man a friend of yours, Miss Crane?” Sonya asked, dangerously polite.

“Only for this last half-hour,” he inserted vigorously. “I came to see Dr. Metcalfe. The name’s Pringle, Doctor.” Charles had his hand on Phil’s arm. “I remember you, Pringle. Glad you called. Mind waiting?” To Phil he said quietly: “Go into the office. I’m so sorry about this, my dear. No, Sonya,” as she stepped to the doorway, “I must ask you, too, to wait elsewhere.”

“Be careful, Charles,” she breathed, the dark eyes flaming. “Perhaps I have guessed more about Miss Crane than you think.”

“In that case you will understand my anxiety.” And he went in and closed the door.

Phil drank the bitter liquid he mixed for her and pressed a hand to her forehead. She gave a ghostly little laugh.

“I felt so well when I set out this morning. I bought my ticket to England and collected your goods. I offered Mr. Pringle a lift and we were going smoothly till Madame Levalle came from an avenue on to the Marine Drive. She saw me on her tail and slowed. There were some mules in front—they may have straggled and forced her almost to a stop. You know what it’s like in the wagon in the sunshine —pretty overpowering unless you’re moving fast. I . . . well, I—”

“I don’t want an explanation, Phil. I can’t help feeling a bit sick that this has occurred, but only for your sake.” He sighed deeply. “As far as I’m concerned she can take over the Institute and run it herself. I’m through.”

“Oh, no, Charles. You can’t relinquish it now. I’ll live somewhere else for my last three weeks. Make it up with Sonya. Tell her I’m leaving.”

“She realizes that I despise her. I’ve fought to throw off her trusteeship and, with luck, this year should see the end of it, but Pm lingering no longer to find out. I’ve had enough.”

He accompanied her into the hall. Sonya was gone, but Pringle stood up with an expectant smile, and happily shook the hand Charles extended.

“You said I was to look you up if my travels brought me this way, Doctor.”

“Two years since then,” Charles reminded him. “Come out on the terrace for a drink and tell me what you’ve been doing with yourself.”

Phil passed through the corridor to the kitchen, and bade two boys unload the box-car and carry the packages very carefully into the master’s office. When the transfer was completed, she decided to go and rest, but instead of using the main stairs she went out the back way to stroll round to her private entrance.

With her foot on the lower iron step, Phil paused. Between the limbs of the frangipani she could glimpse the glistening nose of Sonya’s car. The woman must still be hanging around somewhere. Poor Charles: he was not to evade his showdown. Slowly and thoughtfully, she trod the ornamental stairs, and at the top she paused again, while her heart jerked and righted itself. Sonya was straightening from a deck-chair on the balcony; behind her the french door was wide open, and Phil knew that her few possessions had been subjected to a brazen search.

She stayed holding the curving rail, fury so violent in her breast that her voice came thin and cracked.

“Did you happen upon what you were looking for, Madame Levalle?”

“No, but it is of no consequence.” Sonya’s sculptured smile had a devilish cast. “I was seeking confirmation that you are much less innocent than you appear. Miss Crane, but you are convicted by your own flush of shame. You will pack and leave this place at once.”

“I’ll do nothing of the sort. Go and make your demands of Dr. Metcalfe.”

“You pride yourself on his protection, but nevertheless you will have to obey me. This is not a home for unmarried mothers.”

Sonya’s triumphant bearing had prepared Phil for the epithet, but her knuckles tightened over the rail and a nerve stabbed hard in her throat. If her colour faded, her shoulders remained squared and her chin tilted.

A sudden rage brought Sonya very near. “You have done your best to entangle Charles. You preyed on him with your soft eyes and voice, you fawned for his pity. You have been hoping that he will marry you soon . . . very soon.”

Phil was incapable of speech and fascinated by the quick, viperish movements of the other’s mouth. Filled with a loathing so profound that involuntarily she recoiled from contamination, she yet could not lift her feet from the stone floor.

“You deny nothing!” Sonya spat at her. “In France we have a name for a woman like you—it is not a nice name. You would ruin a man’s career for your own selfish ends, you would take pleasure where you find it and trap Charles into bearing the consequences—”

Phil, forced against the rail, had closed her eyes to shut out the fiendish features. The tirade ceased. She gave a little dry sob and groped blindly for the staircase. She heard Sonya’s exclamation, felt a thrust at her waist, and fell. She screamed, and bumped headlong to the foot of the steps.

Sonya twisted and ran back through the bedroom to the upper corridor. Swiftly she descended to the hall and out to the deserted terrace. Cursing the wagon, she swung her car over the flower-beds and raced out to the Marine Drive.

It was Charles who lifted Phil and carried her to the bed in his surgery, and it was he who, some hours later, brushed the tendrils from her clammy forehead as she returned to consciousness.

With infinite gentleness he told her, “You’ll soon recover, Phil... but you’ve lost the baby.”

IN this life we are called upon to bear only what we can; which means, of course, that each blow should toughen and condition us for the next. Phil might pardonably have wondered why her refusal to leave Valeira a long time ago should have resulted in so much pain and loss; she might have carped at an ungenerous fate and been excused an occasional bout of weeping.

But this final experience had pierced too deep to be assuaged by tears. She emerged from it gallantly, but seamed with a bitterness that no amount of kindness from Charles could disperse. Nothing would ever hurt her again.

She accepted the offer of a spare room in the house of a Government official in town, and agreed to help Charles at the Institute three days a week. The passage to England was cancelled; when she decided to leave West Africa her destination would be the Cape.

Sonya had fled from Port Andrew. Her General hung on for a time, looking pathetically lost, and then he sold his furniture and sailed away, presumably to retire in Bath or Bournemouth.

For the present, Charles was content to sit back and watch Phil make what she would of the circumstances. When she was dining elsewhere he often slipped along for a talk with Jan Bridges, Phil’s hostess, who admitted that though she liked Phil, there was no getting near her. Jan was plain and fair and forthright.

“You can’t judge today’s crop of young things by my generation, Charles. At twenty we kicked around the West End of London and considered ourselves frightful nuts. If we hardened we became cynics and saw no good in anything. Phil’s isn’t that sort of hardness. I’d rather call it a frank repudiation of sentimentality.”

Jan had been told that Phil had “had a few knocks,” but not the precise nature of the knocks.

“Phil’s not like other girls,” he said. “No one can help her much and she sets her own standards. The best part of her is buttoned up.”

Jan shrugged. “That’s true of most of us in this ruddy Hades. I’d hate to think some of my friends hadn’t a better side than the one they show the world. What’s the odds if Phil won’t take men at their own conceited valuation? She’s to be congratulated on having learned it so young.”

“So long as she doesn’t remain embittered over it,” he agreed.

Phil could not have lived in a more agreeable and less demanding household. Much of the time Jan’s husband was away on tour, and Jan was one of those women who are happiest in a crowd. So when Phil was at home she either had the house to herself or melted into a throng of perspiring guests. There were no awkward intervals with an older, inquisitive woman.

But one evening she came in to find Charles taking a lone drink in Jan’s lounge. He had been away for three days, paying a routine visit to a hospital.

“I got in this evening to find my house-mate giving a poker-party,” he explained, “so I walked round to see Jan. She seems to be out.”

“You might have joined the game,” she suggested, taking a cigarette from the crystal box on the table.

“I’m not a poker addict.” He slid forward another chair and struck a match for her. “You’re home early tonight.”

“Sometimes I get a bit tired of the bunch—they’re so raw.” She stretched her legs in front of her and crossed her ankles. “It’s strange how alike people are when lots of them get together. The half-dozen women go in for shredding reputations, and the men haven’t an idea between them beyond drinking and gambling—and the girls they can’t have. You’d think the tropics would breathe character into people.”

“That’s a quaint notion; the reverse is the fact. You’re comparing Port Andrew with primitive spots on the coast where a man’s personality isn’t watered by convention and pleasure-seeking. I was afraid you’d soon weary of this place.”

“It’s the people, not the place. Or probably it’s me.” Unexpectedly she added, “Did you keep the appointment with Dr. Levalle’s executor the other day?”

“Yes—I thought you’d forgotten. He gave me good news. Sonya’s backed out of the trusteeship; she’s returning to India. Next week I have a conference with the Health Department on the question of finance and extensions to the Institute.”

“I’m glad. You’ve worked enough for it.”

He placed an ashtray on the arm of the divan and said mildly: “They’re showing a film at the club pavilion tomorrow evening. Could you bear to sit it out with me?”

“I promised to meet the others for dinner.” She squashed out her cigarette and looked at him. “I’ll put them off if you like.”