But further on, where the Telde road leaves the city, he saw a man whose walk he knew, and instinctively leaned out from the tartana's awning to show himself, and to wave a greeting. The man was Cascaes. But the Senhor Cascaes stared him coolly in the face, and—cut him dead.
The tartana rattled on, and Carter nodded after the Portuguese thoughtfully. "You have always hated me pretty tenderly," he mused. "I wonder why. I've hammered you a dozen times, but it's only been in the ordinary way of business, and what any half-baked Portuguese has got to expect. You surely can't be up against me for that."
Laura was not living in the convent, but lodged in the house of a banana farmer just beyond. Carter found her in the garden. She was sitting on the end of a bench overhung with great lavender clots of wistaria at one end and shaded by a purple mass of bougainvillea at the other. He noted with a queer thrill that there was something cold in the outward form of her greeting.
She returned his kiss accurately enough, but without enthusiasm. Still, from the moment she saw him, the light came into her eyes that he had grown to know so well. The two things did not seem somehow or other to tally. Carter sat himself on the bench and took a good hold on his nerves. Then he slid an arm round her waist and drew her to him. "Well," he said, "out with it. What's the trouble?"
She dropped her head on his shoulder contentedly enough. "Oh, the usual. When you're away from me, dear, I never feel quite certain if I ought to marry you."
"Now, that's awkward, isn't it? But as I have been up country colloguing with your other suitor, old Kallee, you couldn't very well have been with me there."
"I wish you hadn't gone."
"How delightfully unreasonable! We'd nothing to boil the pot on before, and now we've plenty, and neither of us is a bit the worse. What's broke since I've been away?"
"The world, I think," said Laura miserably.
"Then I hope I'm the sticking plaster that will mend it. Now, I want to hear all about Las Palmas, and what you have been doing. I see most of West Africa's here. Great Christopher! but it is fine to smell even the outside edge of civilization once more. My mother used to get tired of Wharfedale occasionally—ah, well, but that wouldn't interest you."