She encountered him again a few days later. He was alone, walking towards the city. Julie had been to see a friend some distance out, and was cycling homeward when she overtook him. It was evening. The sun had dipped below the horizon; where it had disappeared the sky still glowed with changing colours that paled perceptibly before the oncome of precipitate night which in Africa follows rapidly on the path of the vanished day. A shaft of the fading colour in the sky glanced earthwards and glowed in Julie Weeber’s cheeks when she recognised the solitary pedestrian striding along the middle of the road. She slackened speed as she drew near to him, and glanced swiftly about her. No one was in sight, not even a Kaffir; though had a crowd been there to witness her actions she would probably have behaved in exactly the same way. She pedalled her machine alongside the tall, familiar figure, and slipped to the ground. Lawless glanced round. He looked surprised, he also looked—Julie observed it—pleased.
“How do you do?” she said, deliberately holding out her hand. “Isn’t it a beautiful evening?”
He smiled involuntarily at this determined effort at conversation, and answered that such was his opinion also.
“Are you walking into town?” she asked. “I am, too.”
“You mean, you are riding,” he corrected.
“I’m not,” the girl returned imperturbably. “I hate cycling against the wind. I only stuck to my machine because it’s lonely walking by oneself.”
“In that case,” he said, stepping behind her and relieving her of the charge of the cycle, “you must let me wheel this.”
Julie walked along beside him for a few yards without speaking. Then abruptly she turned her face towards him. He was looking down at the machine, a very old one with well-worn tyres and rusty handlebars of a pattern quite out of date. His face was grave and somewhat preoccupied.
“You cut me the other day in Adderly Street,” she said bluntly... “You saw me...”
“Yes,” he admitted.